Related papers: Background studies for a ton-scale argon dark matt…
We present a brief overview of recently proposed detection schemes for axion, axion-like pseudoscalar particle and topological defect dark matter. We focus mainly on the possibility of using atomic and molecular systems for dark matter…
In liquid argon time projection chambers exposed to neutrino beams and running on or near surface levels, cosmic muons and other cosmic particles are incident on the detectors while a single neutrino-induced event is being recorded. In…
Dark matter (DM) is currently searched for with a variety of detection strategies. Accelerator searches are particularly promising, but even if Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it…
By correlating nuclear recoil directions with the Earth's direction of motion through the Galaxy, a directional dark matter detector can unambiguously detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), even in the presence of backgrounds.…
The report describes the research program on the development of ultra-low-energy germanium detectors, with emphasis on WIMP dark matter searches. A threshold of 100 eV is achieved with a 20 g detector array, providing a unique probe to the…
Directional detection of non-baryonic Dark Matter is a promising search strategy for discriminating WIMP events from background. However, this strategy requires both a precise measurement of the energy down to a few keV and 3D…
After a short introduction on particle candidates for dark matter within possible extensions of the standard model, we concentrate on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, and on one of their most interesting physical realizations: the…
DEAP-1 is a 7 kg liquid argon dark matter detector used to prototype the tonne scale DEAP-3600 detector at SNOLAB.We present an analysis of the alpha particle backgrounds in DEAP-1 and isolate the radiations from various 222Rn daughters at…
Astrophysical and cosmological evidence strongly supports the existence of Dark Matter (DM), yet no candidate particle is predicted by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Among the most studied and hypotheses are Weakly Interacting…
It is generally inferred from astronomical measurements that Dark Matter (DM) comprises approximately 27\% of the energy-density of the universe. If DM is a subatomic particle, a possible candidate is a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle…
We review theoretically well-motivated dark-matter candidates, and pathways to their discovery, in the light of recent results from collider physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Taken in aggregate, these encourage broader thinking in…
Decays of radioisotopes on inner detector surfaces can pose a major background concern for the direct detection of dark matter. While these backgrounds are conventionally mitigated with position cuts, these cuts reduce the exposure of the…
Direct detection dark matter experiments looking for WIMP-nucleus elastic scattering will soon be sensitive to an irreducible background from neutrinos which will drastically affect their discovery potential. Here we explore how the…
We are conducting an experiment to search for WIMPs, or weakly-interacting massive particles, in the galactic halo using terrestrial detectors. This generic class of hypothetical particles, whose properties are similar to those predicted by…
Directional detection can provide unambiguous observation of Dark Matter interactions even in presence of insidious backgrounds. The DM-TPC collaboration is developing a detector with the goal of measuring the direction and sense of nuclear…
The discrimination capabilities of a 70 g heat and ionization Ge bolometer are studied. This first prototype has been used by the EDELWEISS Dark Matter experiment, installed in the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane, for direct detection of…
Liquified noble gases are widely used as a target in direct Dark Matter searches. Signals from scintillation in the liquid, following energy deposition from the recoil nuclei scattered by Dark Matter particles (e.g. WIMPs), should be…
We evaluate background rejection capabilities and physics performance of a detector composed of two diverse elements: a sensitive target (filled with one or two species of liquefied noble gasses) and an active veto (made of Gd-doped…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) may constitute a large fraction of the matter in the Universe. There are excess events in the data of DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT, CRESST-II, and recently CDMS-Si, which could be consistent with WIMP…
Forecasting the signal discrimination power of dark matter (DM) searches is commonly limited to a set of arbitrary benchmark points. We introduce new methods for benchmark-free forecasting that instead allow an exhaustive exploration and…