Tübingen 2003 – scientific programme

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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 42: Kern- und Teilchen-Astrophysik IV

HK 42.5: Talk

Thursday, March 20, 2003, 15:00–15:15, F

CRESST Experiment: Direct Dark Matter Particle Detection — •Josef Jochum — TU München, Physik Department E15, 85748 Garching

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the best motivated candidates to explain the non baryonic dark matter in the universe. The goal of the CRESST experiment is to directly detect WIMPs by elastic scattering on nucleii. Cryogenic calorimetric detectors are used in order to achieve a high efficiency for the non ionizing and low energy (only a few keV) WIMP scattering events. By reading out not only the calorimetric temperature signal, but also detecting the scintillation light, emitted by the absorber, a particle identification is possible, due to the different scintillation yields of γ ’s, α ’s and nuclear recoils. This way the sensitivity to low count-rates can largely be improved. The principle of the detectors and the status of the CRESST project at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory are presented.