First germanium-based constraints on sub-MeV Dark Matter with the EDELWEISS experiment

2020/03/31 by EDELWEISS Collaboration, Q. Arnaud, E. Armengaud +39 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.IM #physics.ins-det

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.141301

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 141301 (2020) · 6 pages, 4 figures, corrected typos

arxiv created 2022/03/10 · arxiv updated 2022/03/11

Abstract

The EDELWEISS collaboration has performed a search for Dark Matter (DM) particles interacting with electrons using a 33.4 g Ge cryogenic detector operated underground at the LSM. A charge resolution of 0.53 electron-hole pairs (RMS) has been achieved using the Neganov-Trofimov-Luke amplification with a bias of 78 V. We set the first Ge-based constraints on sub-MeV/c² DM particles interacting with electrons, as well as on dark photons down to 1 eV/c². These are competitive with other searches. In particular, new limits are set on the kinetic mixing of dark photon DM in a so far unconstrained parameter space region in the 6 to 9 eV/c² mass range. These results demonstrate the high relevance of cryogenic Ge detectors for the search of DM interactions producing eV-scale electron signals.

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