The DAMIC dark matter experiment

TL;DR

The DAMIC experiment employs high-resistivity CCDs with low noise and high spatial resolution to detect low-mass WIMPs, demonstrating promising results and ongoing development of a larger detector at SNOLAB.

Contribution

This paper introduces the DAMIC CCD-based approach for dark matter detection, highlighting its low energy threshold and background suppression capabilities.

Findings

Demonstrated low energy threshold of a few tens of eV

Achieved effective background identification techniques

Reported physics results after one year of data collection

Abstract

The DAMIC (Dark Matter in CCDs) experiment uses high resistivity, scientific grade CCDs to search for dark matter. The CCD's low electronic noise allows an unprecedently low energy threshold of a few tens of eV that make it possible to detect silicon recoils resulting from interactions of low mass WIMPs. In addition the CCD's high spatial resolution and the excellent energy response results in very effective background identification techniques. The experiment has a unique sensitivity to dark matter particles with masses below 10 GeV/c$^2$. Previous results have demonstrated the potential of this technology, motivating the construction of DAMIC100, a 100 grams silicon target detector currently being installed at SNOLAB. In this contribution, the mode of operation and unique imaging capabilities of the CCDs, and how they may be exploited to characterize and suppress backgrounds will be discussed, as well as physics results after one year of data taking.