Lowering the energy threshold in COSINE-100 dark matter searches

Understand

COSINE-100 is a dark matter detection experiment that uses NaI(Tl) crystal detectors operating at the Yangyang underground laboratory in Korea since September 2016.

• Its main goal is to test the annual modulation observed by the DAMA/LIBRA experiment with the same target medium.
• Recently DAMA/LIBRA has released data with an energy threshold lowered to 1 keV, and the persistent annual modulation behavior is still observed at 9.5$\sigma$.
• By lowering the energy threshold for electron recoils to 1 keV, COSINE-100 annual modulation results can be compared to those of DAMA/LIBRA in a model-independent way.