New contributions to coherent neutralino-nucleus scattering

We discuss coherent scattering between supersymmetric neutralinos and nuclei via an effective neutralino-gluon interaction. We extend existing calculations by evaluating all relevant one-loop diagrams, without resorting to an expansion in the inverse squark mass. We find new contributions to the effective neutralino-gluon Lagrangian that are nonzero even in the absence of mixing in both the squark and neutralino sectors. The new contributions can be numerically important, and can even dominate the total amplitude. This affects the calculation of event rates in experiments searching for direct or indirect evidence of cosmic relic neutralinos.