Revisiting general dark matter-bound-electron interactions

In this letter we revisit general dark matter (DM)-bound-electron interactions studied previously in the influential work of [Catena et al., Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 033195 (2020)]. We derive the DM-electron response functions and find a crucial minus sign was missed for the second atomic response function W_2 defined in that work. The minus sign has significant phenomenological consequences when explaining experimental bounds on specific DM scenarios. Furthermore, for the most general DM-electron nonrelativistic or relativistic interactions for DM with spin up to one, we find there are three DM response functions (a_0,1,2) whose corresponding atomic response functions (W_0,1,2) are linear combinations of the four response functions (W_1,2,3,4) given in that work, W_0 = W_1, W_2 = |𝐯_0^⊥|^2 W_1+ W_3 - 2 m_e 𝐪·𝐯_0^⊥𝐪^2 W_2, W_3 = (𝐪·𝐯_0^⊥)^2 𝐪^2 W_1 + m_e^2 𝐪^2W_4 - 2 m_e 𝐪·𝐯_0^⊥𝐪^2 W_2. Due to the minus sign correction for W_2, there can be significant cancellations between the W_2 and W_3,4 terms, so that W_2,3 are dominated by the usual response function W_1 in some cases. Ignoring the sign could thus result in misinterpretation of the experimental data in some DM scenarios. As an example, we show that the recent XENON1T constraint on the fermionic DM anapole moment is weakened by a factor of 2 or so. Many DM scenarios involving DM or electron axial-vector current can yield W_2 and thus are potentially affected by the sign.