The Past and Future of Light Dark Matter Direct Detection

Understand

We review the status and future of direct searches for light dark matter.

• We start by answering the question: `Whatever happened to the light dark matter anomalies?' i.e.
• the fate of the potential dark matter signals observed by the CoGeNT, CRESST-II, CDMS-Si and DAMA/LIBRA experiments.
• We discuss how the excess events in the first two of these experiments have been explained by previously underestimated backgrounds.