Karlsruhe 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 110: Experimentelle Techniken der Astroteilchenphysik II

T 110.1: Gruppenbericht

Dienstag, 29. März 2011, 16:45–17:05, 30.95: 001

(contribution moved to PV 7.2) Results from the CRESST Dark Matter Search — •Jens Schmaler — Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, München

The CRESST experiment searches for Dark Matter particles in the form of WIMPs. These particles may be directly detectable via their scatterings off the atomic nuclei in a target material. In case of CRESST, the target is constituted by scintillating CaWO₄ crystals which are operated as cryogenic calorimeters at millikelvin temperature. These detectors allow to measure particle interactions via two independent signal channels: a phonon signal induced in the target crystal and a light signal due to the simultaneous emission of scintillation photons.

Since mid of 2009, CRESST has been collecting data with 10 such detectors, and by the time of writing a total net exposure of more than 600 kg days has been accumulated. In this talk, we report on the latest results from this data set. On the one hand, new exclusion limits can be set, in particular for the scenario of inelastic Dark Matter scattering which has been frequently discussed in the recent past. On the other hand, we observe a number of events in our signal region and we present estimates for background contributions to this observation in order to quantify a possible excess of observed events over the known backgrounds.