No abstract

We report results from a reanalysis of data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. Data taken between October 2006 and September 2008 using eight germanium detectors are reanalyzed with a lowered, 2 keV recoil-energy threshold, to give increased sensitivity to interactions from weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with masses below 10 GeV/c2. This analysis provides stronger constraints than previous CDMS II results for WIMP masses below 9 GeV/c2 and excludes parameter space associated with possible low-mass WIMP signals from the DAMA/LIBRA and CoGeNT experiments.

We report results of a search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) with the silicon detectors of the CDMS II experiment. This blind analysis of 140.2 kg day of data taken between July 2007 and September 2008 revealed three WIMP-candidate events with a surface-event background estimate of 0.41(-0.08)(+0.20)(stat)(-0.24)(+0.28)(syst). Other known backgrounds from neutrons and 206Pb are limited to <0.13 and <0.08 events at the 90% confidence level, respectively. The exposure of this analysis is equivalent to 23.4 kg day for a recoil energy range of 7-100 keV for a WIMP of mass 10  GeV/c2. The probability that the known backgrounds would produce three or more events in the signal region is 5.4%. A profile likelihood ratio test of the three events that includes the measured recoil energies gives a 0.19% probability for the known-background-only hypothesis when tested against the alternative WIMP+background hypothesis. The highest likelihood occurs for a WIMP mass of 8.6  GeV/c2 and WIMP-nucleon cross section of 1.9×10(-41)  cm2.

SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be a next-generation experiment aimed at directly detecting low-mass particles (with masses ≤ 10 GeV=c 2 ) that may constitute dark matter by using cryogenic detectors of two types (HV and iZIP) and two target materials (germanium and silicon). The experiment is being designed with an initial sensitivity to nuclear recoil cross sections ∼1 × 10 −43 cm 2 for a dark matter particle mass of * Corresponding author. tsaab@ufl.edu PHYSICAL REVIEW D 95, 082002 (2017) 2470-0010=2017=95(8)=082002 (17) 082002-1 © 2017 American Physical Society 1 GeV=c 2 , and with capacity to continue exploration to both smaller masses and better sensitivities. The phonon sensitivity of the HV detectors will be sufficient to detect nuclear recoils from sub-GeV dark matter. A detailed calibration of the detector response to low-energy recoils will be needed to optimize running conditions of the HV detectors and to interpret their data for dark matter searches. Low-activity shielding, and the depth of SNOLAB, will reduce most backgrounds, but cosmogenically produced 3 H and naturally occurring 32 Si will be present in the detectors at some level. Even if these backgrounds are 10 times higher than expected, the science reach of the HV detectors would be over 3 orders of magnitude beyond current results for a dark matter mass of 1 GeV=c 2 . The iZIP detectors are relatively insensitive to variations in detector response and backgrounds, and will provide better sensitivity for dark matter particles with masses ≳5 GeV=c 2 . The mix of detector types (HV and iZIP), and targets (germanium and silicon), planned for the experiment, as well as flexibility in how the detectors are operated, will allow us to maximize the low-mass reach, and understand the backgrounds that the experiment will encounter. Upgrades to the experiment, perhaps with a variety of ultra-low-background cryogenic detectors, will extend dark matter sensitivity down to the "neutrino floor," where coherent scatters of solar neutrinos become a limiting background.

SuperCDMS is an experiment designed to directly detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a favored candidate for dark matter ubiquitous in the Universe. In this Letter, we present WIMP-search results using a calorimetric technique we call CDMSlite, which relies on voltage-assisted Luke-Neganov amplification of the ionization energy deposited by particle interactions. The data were collected with a single 0.6 kg germanium detector running for ten live days at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. A low energy threshold of 170 eV ee (electron equivalent) was obtained, which allows us to constrain new WIMP-nucleon spin-independent parameter space for WIMP masses below 6 GeV=c Independent astrophysical surveys and cosmological studies confirm that dark matter constitutes 27% of the energy density of the Universe (reviewed in [1]). Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are one of the favored particle candidates for dark matter. Theoretical predictions for WIMP masses, and for WIMP-interaction cross sections on normal matter, both span many orders of magnitude. However, WIMPs may elastically scatter off nuclei with enough energy, and at a sufficient rate, to be detected by laboratory detectors [2]. Measurements of the nuclear-recoil energy spectrum by these experiments can constrain the properties of WIMP dark matter [3][4][5].