Prof.
Gianfranco Bertone
(University of Amsterdam and GRAPPA)
30/11/2015, 13:45
I will review the status of dark matter searches, and discuss present and upcoming efforts to identify the nature of this mysterious component of the Universe.
Prof.
Wolfgang Rau
(Queen’s University, Kingston)
30/11/2015, 15:15
SuperCDMS employs cryogenic germanium detectors to search for interactions of Weakly Interacting Massive dark matter Particles (WIMPs) with ordinary matter. In standard operating mode phonon and ionization signals are measured for each event for an effective discrimination between background electron recoils and dark matter candidate nuclear recoil events down to a few keV, giving sensitivity...
Dr
Raimund Strauß
(MPI für Physik München)
30/11/2015, 16:15
The CRESST (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) experiment aims at the direct detection of dark matter particles. The recent dark matter run was operated for 2 years with a total target mass of 5kg. With respect to previous measuring campaigns the intrinsic radiopurity of CaWO$_4$ crystals and the capability to reject recoil events from alpha surface contamination...
Dr
Paolo Beltrame
(University of Edinburgh - School of Physics and Astronomy)
30/11/2015, 16:45
The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is a 350kg liquid xenon time projection chamber (TPC) designed to directly detect galactic dark matter, in particular as Weakly Interactive Massive Particle (WIMP). Currently deployed 1 mile underground in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, LUX completed its first physics run in 2013 collecting 85.3 live-days of science...
Dr
Moritz von Sivers
(Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, University of Bern)
30/11/2015, 17:15
Dark matter experiments based on dual-phase Xe TPCs such as XENON100 and the upcoming XENON1T currently place the most stringent limits on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section for WIMP masses above 10GeV/c^2. In this talk, strategies to improve the sensitivity to lower WIMP masses such as using only the charge signal or increasing the light collection efficiency will be discussed.
Dr
Achim Gütlein
(Austrian Academy of Sciences)
30/11/2015, 18:00
The dynamics of gallaxies and gallaxy clusters give many hints for the existence of cold dark matter. However, the nature of dark matter remains unknown and is subject to direct dark matter searches. Many of these searches focus on the observation of dark-matter particles scattering off target nuclei.
Several theories predict dark-matter particles interacting mainly with
the electrons of...
Dr
Alexander Merle
(Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik)
30/11/2015, 18:15
Given the absence of a clear WIMP signal, we have to seriously investigate alternative Dark Matter (DM) candidates. Sterile neutrinos with a mass of a few keV are such an alternative, which have to be produced in the early Universe by a mechanism different from ordinary thermal freeze-out.
After an introduction to the topic, I will review the different proposals on the market for sterile...
Dr
Davide Franco
(Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie)
01/12/2015, 08:30
DarkSide-50 is a two-phase 50 kg liquid argon TPC, shielded by a liquid scintillator neutron veto and by a water Cherenkov muon veto, running at LNGS since October 2013. In the first run, DarkSide-50 operated with atmospheric argon (1,422 kg day exposure), collecting and completely rejecting about 16 millions of background events in the region of interest, mostly originating from 39Ar....
Prof.
Ben Kilminster
(University of Zurich)
01/12/2015, 09:00
The DAMIC (Dark Matter In CCDs) experiment is an experiment using silicon sensors, with low-noise readout to detect dark matter. DAMIC is operated in SNOlab, and is currently being upgraded with 100 grams of thicker, lower noise CCDs, as well as improved shielding for DAMIC 100 which will be operational in 2016. I will discuss preliminary DAMIC 2014 results, expected DAMIC 100 results, and...
Prof.
Nader Mirabolfathi
(Texas A&M University)
01/12/2015, 09:30
Using Neganov-Luke phonon amplification in very low temperature germanium detectors, CDMSlite is reaching unprecedented RMS resolution of 14 eVee and currently the most sensitive experiments for WIMPs of mass < 5 GeV/c^2. However to further improve the Neganov-Luke phonon gain, CDMSlite is currently limited to an applied electric field < 24 Volts/cm. Our recent studies points to the...
Prof.
Tomer Volansky
(Tel Aviv University)
01/12/2015, 09:50
Prof.
Jules Gascon
(IPNL Universite Lyon 1 and CNRS/IN2P3)
01/12/2015, 11:00
The EDELWEISS-III experiment is a direct search for WIMP dark matter that uses an array of twenty-four 800 g heat-and-ionization cryogenic detectors fully covered with interleaved electrodes for the rejection of near-surface events.
An 8-month search has been recently concluded. Detector performances and in particular the improvement of experimental resolutions relative to the previous phase...
Prof.
Henry Wong
(Academia Sinica)
01/12/2015, 11:30
Germanium detectors with sub-keV sensitivities offer a unique opportunity to study neutrino interactions and properties as well as to search for light WIMP Dark Matter. The TEXONO and CDEX Collaborations has been pursuing this research program at the Kuo-Sheng Neutrino Laboratory (KSNL) in Taiwan and in the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in China. We will present highlights of the...
Dr
Johannes Treis
(MPG Semiconductor Laboratory)
01/12/2015, 12:00
The use of scientific grade CCD detectors in the scope of the DAMIC experiment has demonstrated the usefulness of solid state detectors for the search for WIMP interactions with matter. The bulk material of the detector (here: silicon) serves as both interaction medium and detector at the same time. The low readout noise, in combination with the low mass of the silicon nucleus, makes the...
Dr
Marco CIRELLI
(LPTHE Jussieu CNRS)
01/12/2015, 12:15
Indirect detection of Dark Matter (i.e. the search for cosmic rays produced by DM annihilations or decays in the galactic halo, or beyond) is usually considered as a promising approach, rightly so. However, when DM is relatively light, say in the sub-WIMP regime, the technique faces some challenges, essentially because astrophysics gets too much in the way. I will give a general overview of DM...
Dr
Javier Redondo
(Zaragoza University)
01/12/2015, 14:30
The dark matter of the Universe could be made of ultralight particles.
In this talk I briefly review the motivation and status of the searches for well stablished candidates such as axions and recently described axion-like particles, dark photons and other “Exotica”. The search techniques involved are completely different than those employed for massive dark matter candidates, and indirect...
Dr
Bela Majorovits
(MPI Physik)
01/12/2015, 15:15
Axions are hypothetical low-mass bosons which are predicted to exist by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism that can explain the absence of CP-violating effects in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Axions could also provide the cold dark matter of the universe and as such are among the few particle candidates that solve simultaneously two major problems of nature. All existing experimental efforts focus on...
Dr
Sabine Roth
(Physics Department, Queen's University)
01/12/2015, 15:35
The existence of Dark Matter in our Universe is nowadays well established, however, its exact nature still remains unknown. The goal of the NEWS-SNO (New Experiments with Spheres in SNOLAB) project is to search for particle candidates in mass regions not yet accessible by existing experiments. The planned NEWS-SNO detector consists of a spherical TPC (time-projection-chamber) out of ultrapure...
Prof.
Antonio Masiero
(Univ. of Padova and INFN)
01/12/2015, 16:30
