Results on Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from a 11 kg d Target Exposure of DAMIC at SNOLAB (ICRC2021 Proceedings)

Understand

Experimental efforts of the last decades have been unsuccessful in detecting WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) in the 10-to-10$^4$ GeV/$c^2$ range, thus motivating the search for lighter dark matter.

• The DAMIC (DArk Matter In CCDs) at SNOLAB experiment aims for direct detection of light dark matter particles ($m_\chi <$ 10 GeV/$c^2$) by means of CCDs (Charge-Coupled Devices).
• Fully-depleted 675 $\mu$m-thick CCDs are used to such end.
• The optimized readout noise and operation at cryogenic temperatures allow for a detection threshold of 50 eV$_{\text{ee}}$ electron-equivalent energy.