Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 16: Search for Dark Matter I

T 16.4: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2026, 17:00–17:15, AM 00.014

Direct Detection of sub-GeV Dark Matter with the CRESST experiment — •Federico Casadei for the CRESST collaboration — Max Planck Institut für Physik, Garching bei München, Deutschland

The Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers (CRESST) experiment is operating at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy, where it has been pursuing the direct detection of dark matter for almost three decades. Employing scintillating crystals instrumented with Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) and operated as cryogenic calorimeters at millikelvin temperatures, CRESST has achieved energy thresholds as low as 6.7 eV. Combined with the use of targets with light nuclei, this enables CRESST to be particularly sensitive to sub-GeV dark matter particles through nuclear-recoil interactions. In this talk, an overview of the CRESST experiment is presented, highlighting detector operation and recent dark-matter results. Ongoing work to improve sensitivity and advance detector design will also be discussed, together with prospects for future explorations of low-mass dark matter.

Keywords: dark matter; CRESST; nuclear recoil; cryogenic; Transition Edge Sensor