An experiment to search for hypothetical particle dark matter using cryogenic thermal detector, or bolometer is ongoing. The bolometer consists of eight pieces of 21 g LiF absorbers and sensitive NTD germanium thermistors attached to them and is installed in the Nokogiriyama underground cell which is a shallow depth site ($sim 15$ m w.e.). We report on the results from the first running for about ten days using this arrayed bolometer system together with appropriate shieldings and muon veto counters. From the obtained energy spectra the exclusion limits for the cross section of the elastic neutralino-proton scattering are derived under commonly accepted astrophysical assumptions. The sensitivity for the light neutralino with a mass below 5 GeV is improved by this work.
We report on the first dark-matter (DM) search results from PandaX-I, a low threshold dual-phase xenon experiment operating at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. In the 37-kg liquid xenon target with 17.4 live-days of exposure, no DM particle candidate event was found. This result sets a stringent limit for low-mass DM particles and disfavors the interpretation of previously-reported positive experimental results. The minimum upper limit, $3.7times10^{-44}$,cm$^2$, for the spin-independent isoscalar DM-particle-nucleon scattering cross section is obtained at a DM-particle mass of 49,GeV/c$^2$ at 90% confidence level.
LUX, the worlds largest dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber, with a fiducial target mass of 118 kg and 10,091 kg-days of exposure thus far, is currently the most sensitive direct dark matter search experiment. The initial null-result limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-section was released in October 2013, with a primary scintillation threshold of 2 phe, roughly 3 keVnr for LUX. The detector has been deployed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota, and is the first experiment to achieve a limit on the WIMP cross-section lower than $10^{-45}$ cm$^{2}$. Here we present a more in-depth discussion of the novel energy scale employed to better understand the nuclear recoil light and charge yields, and of the calibration sources, including the new internal tritium source. We found the LUX data to be in conflict with low-mass WIMP signal interpretations of other results.
Tokyo group has performed first underground dark matter search experiment in 2001 through 2002 at Kamioka Observatory(2700m.w.e). The detector is eight LiF bolometers with total mass 168g aiming for the direct detection of WIMPs via spin-dependent interaction. With a total exposure of 4.1 kg days, we derived the limits in the a_p-a_n (WIMP-nucleon couplings) plane and excluded a large part of the parameter space allowed by the UKDMC experiment.
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.
This paper describes the operation of the Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills (CCM) detector located in the Lujan Neutron Science Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory. CCM is a 10-ton liquid argon (LAr) detector located 20 meters from a high flux neutron/neutrino source and is designed to search for sterile neutrinos and light dark matter. An engineering run was performed in Fall 2019 to study the characteristics of the CCM120 detector by searching for signals consistent with sterile neutrinos and light dark matter resulting from $pi^+$ and $pi^0$ decays in the tungsten target. New parameter space in a leptophobic dark matter model was excluded for dark matter masses between $sim2.5$ and 60 MeV. The lessons learned from this run have guided the development and construction of the new CCM200 detector that will begin operations in 2021 and significantly improve on these searches.