Skipper-CCD Sensors for the Oscura Experiment: Requirements and Preliminary Tests
Abstract
Oscura is a proposed multi-kg skipper-CCD experiment designed for a dark matter (DM) direct detection search that will reach unprecedented sensitivity to sub-GeV DM-electron interactions with its 10 kg detector array. Oscura is planning to operate at SNOLAB with 2070 m overburden, and aims to reach a background goal of less than one event in each electron bin in the 2-10 electron ionization-signal region for the full 30 kg-year exposure, with a radiation background rate of 0.01 dru. In order to achieve this goal, Oscura must address each potential source of background events, including instrumental backgrounds. In this work, we discuss the main instrumental background sources and the strategy to control them, establishing a set of constraints on the sensors' performance parameters. We present results from the tests of the first fabricated Oscura prototype sensors, evaluate their performance in the context of the established constraints and estimate the Oscura instrumental background based on these results.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.04401,
title = {Skipper-CCD Sensors for the Oscura Experiment: Requirements and Preliminary Tests},
author = {Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara and Santiago Perez and Juan Estrada and Ana Botti and Claudio R. Chavez and Fernando Chierchie and Nathan Saffold and Alexis Aguilar-Arevalo and Fabricio Alcalde-Bessia and Nicolás Avalos and Oscar Baez and Daniel Baxter and Xavier Bertou and Carla Bonifazi and Gustavo Cancelo and Nuria Castelló-Mor and Alvaro E. Chavarria and Juan Manuel De Egea and Juan Carlos D'Olivo and Cyrus Dreyer and Alex Drlica-Wagner and Rouven Essig and Ezequiel Estrada and Erez Etzion and Paul Grylls and Guillermo Fernandez-Moroni and Marivi Fernández-Serra and Santiago Ferreyra and Stephen Holland and Agustín Lantero Barreda and Andrew Lathrop and Ian Lawson and Ben Loer and Steffon Luoma and Edgar Marrufo Villalpando and Mauricio Martinez Montero and Kellie McGuire and Jorge Molina and Sravan Munagavalasa and Danielle Norcini and Alexander Piers and Paolo Privitera and Dario Rodrigues and Richard Saldanha and Aman Singal and Radomir Smida and Miguel Sofo-Haro and Diego Stalder and Leandro Stefanazzi and Javier Tiffenberg and Michelangelo Traina and Sho Uemura and Pedro Ventura and Rocío Vilar Cortabitarte and Rachana Yajur},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.04401},
year = {2024}
}