New Experiment NEWSdm for Direct Searches for Heavy Dark Matter Particles

• Published in: Physics of atomic nuclei Vol. 83; no. 1; pp. 83 - 91
• Main Authors: Gorbunov, S. A., Konovalova, N. S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Moscow Pleiades Publishing 2020; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Analysis; Dark matter; Dark matter (Astronomy); Detectors; Elementary Particles and Fields; Emulsions; Experiments; Galactic halos; Nuclear emulsions; Nuclei; Particle and Nuclear Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Radiation, Background; Recoil; Searching; Spatial resolution; Weakly interacting massive particles
• ISSN: 1063-7788; 1562-692X
• DOI: 10.1134/S1063778820010056

NEWSdm [Nuclear Emulsions for WIMP (weakly interacting massive particles) Search—directional measurement] is a new international experiment in which a photoemulsion target is used for a direct detection of dark-matter particles. In this experiment, the detection method is based on fixing the directions of trajectories of recoil nuclei originating from the elastic interaction of target nuclei with dark-matter particles from the galactic halo. This distinguishes NEWSdm from standard low-background experiments aimed at searches for dark-matter particles and based on an analysis of annual modulations of the number of detected events. The detector, which is simultaneously a target, is a block of nuclear emulsions that have a uniquely high spatial resolution owing to the reduction of the size of AgBr grains to about
 nm. A resolution on this order of magnitude permits directional searches for dark-matter particles in cosmic space even at energies of recoil nuclei not higher than 30 keV.