Abstract
This thesis deals with the astrophysical aspects of the direct detection of WIMP dark matter (DMDD). In particular, it focuses on the observational constraints on the astrophysical quantities relevant for DMDD, which impact on the interpretation of the experimental results.We review the formalism of DMDD and we summarize some of the main experimental results in this domain and the statistical methods usually employed to interpret the data, reproducing the associated constraints on the parameter space relevant for spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interaction. We summarize the set of astrophysical assumptions usually employed, the Standard Halo Model, and we point out the impact of variations in its parameters on such limits.We outline the main concepts of the dynamics of our galaxy that allow to put the astrophysics related to DMDD in a wider framework. In particular, we review the description of the Galaxy through Milky Way mass models (MWMM), pointing out how the astrophysical quantities are related. We describe some procedures to obtain dark matter phase-space distributions consistent with given dark matter profile and Galactic potential, the simplest being Eddington equation, of which we discuss the limits of applicability. We review in detail the recent literature on the main determinations and uncertainties of the astrophysical quantities relevant for DMDD and of the fundamental Galactic parameters.In the most original part of this thesis we focus on the recent estimates of the local Galactic escape speed published by the RAVE collaboration. We study in detail the implications of these results for the spin-independent interpretation of DMDD experiments. We take into account the correlations between the astrophysical quantities relevant for DMDD calculations, and from the assumed MWMM we compute the dark matter phase-space distribution using Eddington equation, which provides a self-consistent physical connection between the two. This procedure leads to more constraining exclusion curves with respect to the standard ones, due to higher values of the local dark matter density.