  The detection of dark matter is central to particle physics and cosmology.
Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a dark matter candidate, the
lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). When combined with fairly well
understood physics (quark structure of the nucleon and some nuclear structure,
they yield direct event rates. The obtained rates are, however, very low. So we
exploit characteristic signatures, like the modulation effect, i.e. the
dependence of the rate on the earth's annual motion, and the directional rate,
i.e its dependence on the direction of the recoiling nucleus, employing various
velocity distributions, isothermal (symmetric and axially asymmetric) and non
isothermal (due to to caustic rings).
