Related papers: Electrovolt-scale backgrounds from surfaces
Solid-state phonon and charge detectors probe the scattering of weakly interacting particles, such as dark matter and neutrinos, through their low recoil thresholds. Recent advancements have pushed sensitivity to eV-scale energy…
We discuss several low-energy backgrounds to sub-GeV dark matter searches, which arise from high-energy particles of cosmic or radioactive origin that interact with detector materials. We focus in particular on Cherenkov radiation,…
Recent experiments searching for sub-GeV/$c^2$ dark matter have observed event excesses close to their respective energy thresholds. Although specific to the individual technologies, the measured excess event rates have been consistently…
In recent times, the sensitivity of low-mass direct dark matter searches has been limited by unknown low energy backgrounds close to the energy threshold of the experiments known as the low energy excess (LEE). The CRESST experiment…
Recently low-mass dark matter direct searches have been hindered by a low energy background, drastically reducing the physics reach of the experiments. In the CRESST-III experiment, this signal is characterised by a significant increase of…
Dual-phase xenon detectors, as currently used in direct detection dark matter experiments, have observed elevated rates of background electron events in the low energy region. While this background negatively impacts detector performance in…
Dark matter with mass below about a GeV is essentially unobservable in conventional direct detection experiments. However, newly proposed technology will allow the detection of single electron events in semiconductor materials with…
In semiconductor detectors designed for capturing dark matter particles or neutrinos, when the detection threshold is constantly improved to increasingly low energies, an "excess" signal of apparent energy release events below a few hundred…
The reach of sub-GeV dark-matter detectors is at present severely affected by low-energy events from various origins. We present the theoretical methods to compute the single- and few-electron events that arise from secondary radiation…
Proposed dark matter detectors with eV-scale sensitivities will detect a large background of atomic (nuclear) recoils from coherent photon scattering. This background climbs steeply below $\sim10$~eVnr, far exceeding the declining rate of…
Dark matter particles with sufficiently large interactions with ordinary matter can scatter in the Earth's atmosphere and crust before reaching an underground detector. This Earth-shielding effect can induce a directional dependence in the…
Models for light dark matter particles with masses below 1 GeV/c$^2$ are a natural and well-motivated alternative to so-far unobserved weakly interacting massive particles. Gram-scale cryogenic calorimeters provide the required detector…
Superconducting transition-edge sensors (TESs) are a type of quantum sensor known for its high single-photon detection efficiency and low background. This makes them ideal for particle physics experiments searching for rare events. In this…
We present a comprehensive analysis of high-resolution transition-edge sensors (TESs) as a quantum sensing platform for detecting dark matter (DM). Operating near the thermodynamic noise limit with sub-eV energy resolution, TESs offer a…
A previously unexplained background called the Low Energy Excess (LEE) has negatively impacted the reach of a variety of low threshold calorimeters including light dark matter direct detection and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus…
Many low-threshold experiments observe sharply rising event rates of yet unknown origins below a few hundred eV, and larger than expected from known backgrounds. Due to the significant impact of this excess on the dark matter or neutrino…
Low-energy Compton scattering is an important background for sub-GeV dark matter direct-detection and other experiments. Current Compton scattering calculations typically rely on assumptions that are not valid in the low-energy region of…
Secondary electron emission (SEE) from solids plays an important role in many areas of science and technology.1 In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the experimental and theoretical studies of SEE. A recent study proposed…
Semiconductors are by now well-established targets for direct detection of MeV to GeV dark matter via scattering off electrons. We show that semiconductor targets can also detect significantly lighter dark matter via an absorption process.…
The energy threshold of a cryogenic calorimeter can be lowered by reducing its size. This is of importance since the resulting increase in signal rate enables new approaches in rare-event searches, including the detection of MeV mass dark…