A review of the discovery reach of directional Dark Matter detection
  Cosmological observations indicate that most of the matter in the Universe is
Dark Matter. Dark Matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
(WIMPs) can be detected directly, via its elastic scattering off target nuclei.
Most current direct detection experiments only measure the energy of the
recoiling nuclei. However, directional detection experiments are sensitive to
the direction of the nuclear recoil as well. Due to the Sun's motion with
respect to the Galactic rest frame, the directional recoil rate has a dipole
feature, peaking around the direction of the Solar motion. This provides a
powerful tool for demonstrating the Galactic origin of nuclear recoils and
hence unambiguously detecting Dark Matter. Furthermore, the directional recoil
distribution depends on the WIMP mass, scattering cross section and local
velocity distribution. Therefore, with a large number of recoil events it will
be possible to study the physics of Dark Matter in terms of particle and
astrophysical properties. We review the potential of directional detectors for
detecting and characterizing WIMPs.
