Journal Article

The CRESST-III low-mass WIMP detector

Bucci, C, Kiefer, M, Zöller, A, Bento, A, Erb, A, Reindl, F, Strandhagen, C, Tanzke, A, Hauff, D, Petricca, F, Ulrich, A, Kraus, H, Ferreiro Iachellini, N, Pagliarone, C, Strauss, R, Usherov, I, Lanfranchi, J C, Willers, M, Potzel, W, Loebell, J, Stodolsky, L, Defay, X, Türkoglu, C, Wawoczny, S, Gütlein, A, Pröbst, F, Angloher, G, von Feilitzsch, F, Canonica, L, Gorla, P, Schönert, S, Seidel, W, Trinh Thi, H H, Ufflnger, M, Schäffner, K, Schieck, J, Wüstrich, M, Münster, A, Jochum, J, Kluck, H

2016

Overview

The next generation direct dark matter experiment CRESST-III has a high potential to significantly increase the sensitivity to low-mass WIMPs (mx ≲10GeV/c2). We present the new CRESST detector module: it consists of a 24 g CaWO4 crystal operated as a phonon detector and a 20×20 mm2 silicon-on-sapphire light detector. The phonon energy threshold is lowered to ~100eV and a light detector resolution of typically 5eV is achieved. A fully-scintillating inner detector housing is realised which efficiently rejects events from surface-alpha decays. The CaWO4 sticks holding the target crystal are also operated as calorimeters to discriminate all possible artefacts related to the support structure. A projection for the sensitivity to spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering is given for the first phase of CRESST-III which will start beginning of 2016.

• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Subject: Alpha decay / Calcium tungstates / Dark matter / Phonons / Physics / Sapphire / Scheelite / Sensitivity / Sensors / Weakly interacting massive particles