A direction-sensitive dark matter search experiment at Kamioka underground laboratory with the NEWAGE-0.3a detector was performed. The NEWAGE- 0.3a detector is a gaseous micro-time-projection chamber filled with CF4 gas at 152 Torr. The fiducial volume and target mass are 20*25*31 cm3 and 0.0115 kg, respectively. With an exposure of 0.524 kgdays, improved spin-dependent weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)-proton cross section limits by a direction-sensitive method were achieved including a new record of 5400 pb for 150 GeV/c2 WIMPs. We studied the remaining background and found that ambient gamma-rays contributed about one-fifth of the remaining background and radioactive contaminants inside the gas chamber contributed the rest.
NEWAGE is a direction-sensitive dark matter search using a low-pressure gaseous time projection chamber. A low alpha-ray emission rate micro pixel chamber had been developed in order to reduce background for dark matter search. We conducted the dark matter search at the Kamioka Observatory in 2018. The total live time was 107.6 days corresponding to an exposure of 1.1 kg${cdot}$days. Two events remained in the energy region of 50-60 keV which was consistent with 2.5 events of the expected background. A directional analysis was carried out and no significant forward-backward asymmetry derived from the WIMP-nucleus elastic scatterings was found. Thus a 90% confidence level upper limit on Spin-Dependent WIMP-proton cross section of 50 pb for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c2 was derived. This limit is the most stringent yet obtained from direction-sensitive dark matter search experiments.
The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment, a dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber operating at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Lead, South Dakota), was cooled and filled in February 2013. We report results of the first WIMP search dataset, taken during the period April to August 2013, presenting the analysis of 85.3 live-days of data with a fiducial volume of 118 kg. A profile-likelihood analysis technique shows our data to be consistent with the background-only hypothesis, allowing 90% confidence limits to be set on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering with a minimum upper limit on the cross section of $7.6 times 10^{-46}$ cm$^{2}$ at a WIMP mass of 33 GeV/c$^2$. We find that the LUX data are in strong disagreement with low-mass WIMP signal interpretations of the results from several recent direct detection experiments.
The known direction of motion of dark matter particles relative to the Earth may be a key for their unambiguous identification even in the presence of backgrounds. We describe a prototype detector that is able to reconstruct direction vectors of weakly interacting massive particles that may the dominant constituent of the dark matter in our galaxy. The detector uses a low-density gas (CF4) in a 10liter time-projection chamber with mesh-based electrodes and optical and charge readout. Initial results confirm good performance in the reconstruction of direction angle and sense (head-tail) for low-momentum nuclear recoils.
The CRESST-II experiment uses cryogenic detectors to search for nuclear recoil events induced by the elastic scattering of dark matter particles in CaWO$_4$ crystals. Given the low energy threshold of our detectors in combination with light target nuclei, low mass dark matter particles can be probed with high sensitivity. In this letter we present the results from data of a single detector module corresponding to 52 kg live days. A blind analysis is carried out. With an energy threshold for nuclear recoils of 307 eV we substantially enhance the sensitivity for light dark matter. Thereby, we extend the reach of direct dark matter experiments to the sub-region and demonstrate that the energy threshold is the key parameter in the search for low mass dark matter particles.
We report the first dark matter search results from XENON1T, a $sim$2000-kg-target-mass dual-phase (liquid-gas) xenon time projection chamber in operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy and the first ton-scale detector of this kind. The blinded search used 34.2 live days of data acquired between November 2016 and January 2017. Inside the (1042$pm$12) kg fiducial mass and in the [5, 40] $mathrm{keV}_{mathrm{nr}}$ energy range of interest for WIMP dark matter searches, the electronic recoil background was $(1.93 pm 0.25) times 10^{-4}$ events/(kg $times$ day $times mathrm{keV}_{mathrm{ee}}$), the lowest ever achieved in a dark matter detector. A profile likelihood analysis shows that the data is consistent with the background-only hypothesis. We derive the most stringent exclusion limits on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interaction cross section for WIMP masses above 10 GeV/c${}^2$, with a minimum of 7.7 $times 10^{-47}$ cm${}^2$ for 35-GeV/c${}^2$ WIMPs at 90% confidence level.