Speaker
Description
The DAMIC experiment employs large area, thick charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for the interactions of low-mass dark matter (DM) particles in the galactic halo with silicon atoms in the CCD target. The low pixel noise provides DAMIC with sensitivity to ionization signals of only a few charges, for a remarkably low energy threshold. From 2017 to 2019, DAMIC collected dark-matter search data with a seven-CCD array (40-gram target) installed in a low radiation environment in the SNOLAB underground laboratory. Results include the search for hidden-sector DM particles with masses as small as a few MeV/$c^2$ from their scattering with electrons. Recently, we performed a search for nuclear recoils from the scattering of WIMPs with GeV/c$^2$-scale masses in a 11 kg day exposure (PRL 125 241803). Our result stands out compared to other experimental searches for low-mass WIMPs because the response to the WIMP signal has been directly calibrated (PRD 94 082007). We probe with the same nuclear target parameter space that corresponds to the WIMP-signal interpretation of the CDMS anomaly (PRL 111 251301), and report a conspicuous excess of events below 200 eV$_{\rm ee}$.
| Reference to paper (DOI or arXiv) | 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.241803 |
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