Review on dark matter searches

TL;DR

This review discusses the challenges, techniques, and recent results of direct dark matter detection experiments, emphasizing TPC-based methods and their potential to identify dark matter signatures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current and emerging direct detection techniques, highlighting the role of noble liquids and gaseous detectors in dark matter searches.

Findings

Noble liquid detectors currently lead in constraining dark matter interaction cross sections.

Gaseous detectors show promise for low-mass dark matter and directional detection.

Experiments are exploring distinctive signatures like annual modulation and directionality.

Abstract

Dark matter particles populating our galactic halo could be directly detected by measuring their scattering off target nuclei or electrons in a suitable detector. As this interaction is expected to occur with very low probability and would generate very small energy deposits, the detection is challenging; the possible identification of distinctive signatures (like an annual modulation in the interaction rates or directionality) to assign a dark matter origin to a possible observation is being considered. Here, the physics case of different dark matter direct detection experiments will be presented and the different and complementary techniques which are being applied or considered will be discussed, summarizing their features and latest results obtained. Special focus will be made on TPC-related projects; experiments using noble liquids have presently a leading role to constrain interaction cross sections of a wide range of dark matter candidates and gaseous detectors are very promising to explore specifically low mass dark matter as well as to measure directionality.