Neutralino-nucleus elastic cross section in the minimal supersymmetric standard model with explicit CP violation

We study the elastic scattering of the lightest neutralino with a nucleus in the framework of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with explicit flavor preserving CP violation, including the one-loop CP-violating neutral Higgs-boson mixing effects induced dominantly by the CP phases in the top and bottom (s)quark sectors. We construct the most general form of the effective Lagrangian for the neutralino-nucleus scattering in the limit of vanishing momentum transfers and then we perform a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the complex CP phases on the mass spectra of the lightest neutralino, neutral Higgs bosons, and top squarks, and on the spin-dependent and spin-independent neutralino-nucleus scattering cross section for three nucleus targets F, Si, and Ge. The CP phases can reduce or enhance the neutralino-nucleus cross sections significantly, depending on the values of the real parameters in the MSSM.