2014/10/31 by R. Strauss, G. Angloher, A. Bento +42 · 26 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Detector #Event (particle physics) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Phase (matter) #Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies #Resolution (logic) #Scattering #WIMP #Weakly interacting massive particles #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.IM #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3572-9
published in The European Physical Journal C 75(8) (Springer Science+Business Media) · 9 pages, 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2015/07/30 · arxiv created 2016/01/25 · arxiv updated 2016/01/26 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The cryogenic dark matter experiment CRESST-II aims at the direct detection of WIMPs via elastic scattering off nuclei in scintillating CaWO 4 4 crystals. We present a new, highly improved, detector design installed in the current run of CRESST-II Phase 2 with an efficient active rejection of surface-alpha backgrounds. Using CaWO 4 4 sticks instead of metal clamps to hold the target crystal, a detector housing with fully-scintillating inner surface could be realized. The presented detector (TUM40) provides an excellent threshold of ∼ 0.60 ∼ 0.60 keV and a resolution of σ ≈ 0.090 σ ≈ 0.090 keV (at 2.60 keV). With significantly reduced background levels, TUM40 sets stringent limits on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section and probes a new region of parameter space for WIMP masses below 3 GeV/c 2 2 . In this paper, we discuss the novel detector design and the surface-alpha event rejection in detail.