DAMIC-M Experiment: Thick, Silicon CCDs to search for Light Dark Matter

Understand

This report presents an overview of the unconventional use of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for Dark Matter (DM).

• The DArk Matter In CCDs (DAMIC Experiment) employs the bulk silicon of thick, fully-depleted CCDs as a target for ionization signals produced by interactions of particle dark matter from the galactic halo.
• The DAMIC collaboration has engaged in an extensive campaign of characterization efforts to understand the response of these CCDs to low-energy nuclear recoils and their unique capabilities, including the use of high spatial resolution for both the rejection and study of backgrounds.
• The preliminary results of DAMIC prove the performance of the detector, provide measurements of the background contamination and demonstrate the potentiality for DM searches, with only ~40 grams of detector mass.