LEGENDRE · Understanding the nature of the low energy excess in cryogenic detectors to discover light dark matter
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-12-01 → 2025-11-30
- EU contribution
- €189,687
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Understanding the nature of the low energy excess in cryogenic detectors to discover light dark matter
Multiple astrophysical observations point to the existence of a gravitationally-interacting substance that makes up about 85% of all matter in the universe. Despite its abundance, a direct signature of it in our laboratories is still lacking, and as such its true nature remains today one of the great unresolved mysteries in physics. This is what we call dark matter. In recent years, a new generation of direct-detection experiments has pushed the boundaries of sensitivity to low mass dark matter candidates, reaching extremely small energy scales that were once thought impossible to explore. However, these experiments have begun to observe unexpected excesses of low-energy events that do not match the characteristics of dark matter. The origin of this excess background is yet unclear, and today it represents the main limitation for the discovery of low-mass dark matter candidates. The LEGENDRE project addresses this challenge by conducting a dedicated data-taking campaign using state-of-the-art cryogenic detectors developed by the SuperCDMS collaboration, operated in the Cryogenic Underground TEst facility (CUTE) at SNOLAB, one of the world’s leading underground laboratories. The collected data are analyzed using a novel methodology designed to help disentangle and understand the origin of the low-energy excess. By providing crucial insights into this limiting background, LEGENDRE strengths Europe’s contribution to the global dark matter search effort and helps guide the design and analysis strategies of future high-sensitivity experiments.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Although numerous evidences from cosmology and astrophysics indicate the existence of Dark Matter (DM), which constitutes about 85% of the whole matter in the universe, its intrinsic nature is still today one of the major mysteries in physics. The lack of the discovery of the so-called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles is shifting the attention to additional, well-motivated, theoretical models that predict DM particles with lower masses. To test these, new extremely sensitive direct detection DM experiments have been developed, which are now starting to explore energies so low that were considered impossible to reach until just a couple of years ago. But these experiments are now observing unpredicted excesses of events, mostly incompatible with a DM signal, in the previously unexplored low energy region. And this irreducible background dramatically limits their sensitivity to new low-mass signals. In this project I propose a novel analysis strategy that will lead to the understanding of the nature of the low energy excess, providing invaluable information to the European and international experiments working on this field. I will also lead and coordinate the data taking campaign necessary for a positive outcome, which will employ world-leading sensitive cryogenic devices developed by the SuperCDMS collaboration, installed in the Cryogenic Underground Test at the world-class underground SNOLAB laboratory. The project will be completed in a leading research group, to which I will bring knowledge on how to efficiently operate a cryogenic detector as well as on how to run a dilution refrigerator. This work will extend my experience, show my research competencies and independence, enhancing the development of my career as a researcher.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101104484
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e50b026774&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e522ce4a79&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union