Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 70: Electronics, Trigger, DAQ III

T 70.6: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2026, 17:30–17:45, KH 00.023

The DAQ and Trigger System for the DELight Experiment — •Lea Burmeister for the DELight collaboration — Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University

While heavy WIMP searches have reached unprecedented sensitivities, the light dark matter (DM) sector remains largely unexplored. Probing light dark matter candidates requires novel detector concepts with ultra-low thresholds. The Direct search Experiment for Light dark matter (DELight) will employ superfluid helium-4 as the target medium monitored with MMC-based large-area microcalorimeters (LAMCALs) operating at mK temperatures, which provide excellent energy resolution with a detection threshold of a few eV.

The DELight experiment requires a data acquisition (DAQ) system capable of detecting extremely small energy depositions without acquiring deadtime. This talk presents ongoing R&D work on the DELight DAQ and trigger system, with focus on its FPGA-based Level-1 (L1) trigger. The L1 trigger will process digitized microcalorimeter waveforms in real time using downsampling, filtering, and flexible threshold logic to distinguish low-energy events from noise. The filtering step will be achieved using an FIR filter whose coefficients resemble a time-domain optimal filter.

Keywords: Light dark matter; L1 Trigger; Delight; Direct dark matter search; FIR optimal filter