COSINUS - Progressing towards shining light on the long-standing dark matter claim of DAMA/LIBRA

by Karoline Schäffner (MPP Munich)

Tuesday 12 Jul 2022, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Berlin

Main

Dark matter is a main ingredient of the cosmos, its nature, despite of enormous progress in terrestrial direct dark matter searches, is still undiscovered. The DAMA/LIBRA claim creates since more than 25 years a controversial situation in the field of direct dark matter detection. Most prominently, results from phase 2 add new constraints since they imply that any interpretation of DAMA in terms of dark matter requires non-standard interactions of dark matter particles, or non-standard astrophysical assumptions, or both.

For a fully model-independent investigation of the nature of the DAMA/LIBRA signal, experiments which use the same material as DAMA/LIBRA are mandatory.

COSINUS will use crystals of NaI, however not operating them as mere scintillation detectors, but as so-called cryogenic scintillating calorimeters cooled to milli-Kelvin temperatures. COSINUS detectors provide a simultaneous and independent measurement of both the temperature signal and the scintillation light signal caused by a particle interaction. Since the amount of produced light depends on the particle type (light quenching), this detection technique yields identification of the type of interacting particle on an event-by-event basis.

In this seminar talk I will present results from the latest generation of COSINUS prototype detectors utilizing the so-called "remoTES“ detector readout principle. Furthermore I will present on the current status of the experimental setup installation presently ongoing at the Gran Sasso underground lab in Italy.