Constraints on low-mass WIMPs from the EDELWEISS-III dark matter search

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Collaboration, EDELWEISS, Armengaud, E, Arnaud, Q, Augier, C, Benoît, A, Bergé, L, Bergmann, T, Billard, J, Blümer, J, de Boissière, T, Bres, G, Broniatowski, A, Brudanin, V, Camus, P, Cazes, A, Chapellier, M, Charlieux, F, Dumoulin, L, Eitel, K, Filosofov, D, Foerster, N, Fourches, N, Garde, G, Gascon, J, Gerbier, G, Giuliani, A, Grollier, M, Gros, M, Hehn, L, Hervé, S, Heuermann, G, Humbert, V, De Jésus, M, Jin, Y, Jokisch, S, Juillard, A, Kéfélian, C, Kleifges, M, Kozlov, V, Kraus, H, Kudryavtsev, V A, Le-Sueur, H, Lin, J, Mancuso, M, Marnieros, S, Menshikov, A, X -F Navick, Nones, C, Olivieri, E, Pari, P, Paul, B, M -C Piro, Poda, D V, Queguiner, E, Robinson, M, Rodenas, H, Rozov, S, Sanglard, V, Schmidt, B, Scorza, S, Siebenborn, B, Tcherniakhovski, D, Vagneron, L, Weber, M, Yakushev, E, Zhang, X
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 09.05.2016
• Subjects: Bolometers; Dark matter; Elastic scattering; Physics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics; Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment; Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors; Scattering cross sections; Searching; Weakly interacting massive particles
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1603.05120

We present the results of a search for elastic scattering from galactic dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in the 4-30 GeV/\(c^2\) mass range. We make use of a 582 kg-day fiducial exposure from an array of 800 g Germanium bolometers equipped with a set of interleaved electrodes with full surface coverage. We searched specifically for \(\sim 2.5-20\) keV nuclear recoils inside the detector fiducial volume. As an illustration the number of observed events in the search for 5 (resp. 20) GeV/\(c^2\) WIMPs are 9 (resp. 4), compared to an expected background of 6.1 (resp. 1.4). A 90% CL limit of \(4.3\times 10^{-40}\) cm\(^2\) (resp. \(9.4\times 10^{-44}\) cm\(^2\)) is set on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-section for 5 (resp. 20) GeV/\(c^2\) WIMPs. This result represents a 41-fold improvement with respect to the previous EDELWEISS-II low-mass WIMP search for 7 GeV/\(c^2\) WIMPs. The derived constraint is in tension with hints of WIMP signals from some recent experiments, thus confirming results obtained with different detection techniques.