Generalized analysis of WIMP searches

We perform a generalized analysis of data from weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) search experiments for point-like WIMPs of arbitrary spin and general Lorenz-invariant WIMP-nucleus interaction. We explicitly show that in the non-relativistic limit only spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interactions survive, which can be parameterized by only five independent parameters. We explore this five-dimensional parameter space to determine whether the annual modulation observed in the DAMA experiment can be consistent with all other experiments which reported null results. Although we find regions consistent with all existing data none of them can be easily accommodated in the minimal supersymmetric standard model.