First results from the NEWS-G direct dark matter search experiment at the LSM

By Q. Arnaud, D. Asner, J. Bard, A. Brossard, B. Cai, M. Chapellier, M. Clark, E. Corcoran, T. Dandl, A. Dastgheibi-Fard and 25 more. 2017

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Abstract New Experiments With Spheres-Gas (NEWS-G) is a direct dark matter detection experiment using Spherical Proportional Counters (SPCs) with light noble gases to search for low-mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). We report the results from the first physics run taken at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (LSM) with SEDINE, a 60 cm diameter prototype SPC operated with a mixture of Ne + CH 4 (0.7%) at 3.1 bars for a total exposure of 9.6 kg · days. New constraints are set on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-section in the sub-GeV/c 2 mass region. We exclude cross-sections above 4.4 × 10 − 37 cm 2 at 90% confidence level (C.L.) for a 0.5 GeV/c 2 WIMP. The competitive results obtained with SEDINE are promising for the next phase of the NEWS-G experiment: a 140 cm diameter SPC to be installed at SNOLAB by summer 2018.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dbfd5d2642f4c27fd99d1e30cea4c09e7a44f5b9