Nuclear Physics of Dark Matter Detection

Effective theory provides an attractive interface between nuclear theory and results from direct detection dark matter searches, on one hand, and candidate ultraviolet theories for describing dark matter on a more fundamental level, on the other. I describe a recently developed nucleon-level effective theory of dark matter particle interactions and its embedding in a nucleus, to determine the most general form of the nuclear response for dark matter elastic scattering. This leads to the conclusion that a great deal can be learned about dark matter particle properties if the requisite number of independent nuclear experiments are done. I will describe some of the associated nuclear physics, including shell model calculations of the relevant response functions.