First Results from the DarkSide-50 Dark Matter Experiment at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso

Abstract

We report the first results of DarkSide-50, a direct search for dark matter operating in the underground Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) and searching for the rare nuclear recoils possibly induced by weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The dark matter detector is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber with a (46.4+-0.7) kg active mass, operated inside a 30 t organic liquid scintillator neutron veto, which is in turn installed at the center of a 1 kt water Cherenkov veto for the residual flux of cosmic rays. We report here the null results of a dark matter search for a (1422+-67) kg d exposure with an atmospheric argon fill. This is the most sensitive dark matter search performed with an argon target, corresponding to a 90% CL upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross section of 6.1x10^-44 cm^2 for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c^2.

26 pages, 7 figures; updated figures and references, notably Fig. 7 has updated CDMSII curve; fixed typos; clarified some language and figures; updated references

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Cited by in corpus (53)

• DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector
• Current status of direct dark matter detection experiments
• Performance of the EDELWEISS-III experiment for direct dark matter searches
• Search for dark matter particle interactions with electron final states with DarkSide-50
• Direct detection of dark matter: a critical review
• Evidence of delayed light emission of TetraPhenyl Butadiene excited by liquid Argon scintillation light
• A Review of Basic Energy Reconstruction Techniques in Liquid Xenon and Argon Detectors for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics Using NEST
• The ArDM Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory: a ton-scale detector for Dark Matter Searches
• Optimizing EDELWEISS detectors for low-mass WIMP searches
• Collider and Dark Matter Searches in the Inert Doublet Model from Peccei-Quinn Symmetry
• Simulation of argon response and light detection in the DarkSide-50 dual phase TPC
• Properties of Liquid Argon Scintillation Light Emission
• Calibration of the liquid argon ionization response to low energy electronic and nuclear recoils with DarkSide-50
• Electroluminescence and electron avalanching in two-phase detectors
• Electron scattering of light new particles from evaporating primordial black holes
• Photon emission and atomic collision processes in two-phase argon doped with xenon and nitrogen
• Isospin-violating dark matter in the light of recent data
• Proposed low-energy absolute calibration of nuclear recoils in a dual-phase noble element TPC using D-D neutron scattering kinematics
• High sensitivity characterization of an ultra-high purity NaI(Tl) crystal scintillator with the SABRE proof-of-principle detector
• The Electronics, Trigger and Data Acquisition System for the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber of the DarkSide-50 Search for Dark Matter
• SiPM cross-talk in liquid argon detectors
• Photon detection system for ProtoDUNE dual phase
• Dark Matter Detection Capabilities of a Large Multipurpose Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber
• The science and technology of liquid argon detectors
• Measurement of ambient radon progeny decay rates and energy spectra in liquid argon using the MicroBooNE detector
• The DarkSide-20k experiment
• Effect of Low Electric Fields on Alpha Scintillation Light Yield in Liquid Argon
• Scintillation and optical properties of xenon-doped liquid argon
• Design and performance of the field cage for the XENONnT experiment
• ALETHEIA: Hunting for Low-mass Dark Matter with Liquid Helium TPCs
• Further studies of proportional electroluminescence in two-phase argon
• Doping Liquid Argon with Xenon in ProtoDUNE Single-Phase: Effects on Scintillation Light
• Radon Mitigation for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB Dark Matter Experiment
• Observation of Radon Mitigation in MicroBooNE by a Liquid Argon Filtration System
• Cryogenic SiPMs for the Optical Readout of DarkSide-20k
• Self-compensating Light Calorimetry with Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber for GeV Neutrino Physics
• Spectral shapes of forbidden argon beta decays as background component for rare-event searches
• Prospects of detecting the reactor $\overline{{\nu }_e}$-Ar coherent elastic scattering with a low threshold dual-phase argon time projection chamber at Taishan
• Study of visible-light emission in pure and methane-doped liquid argon
• Observation of primary scintillations in the visible range in liquid argon doped with methane
• Benchmarking the design of the cryogenics system for the underground argon in DarkSide-20k
• Search for dark matter annual modulation with DarkSide-50
• Long-term temporal stability of the DarkSide-50 dark matter detector
• Coating $\mu$m TPB on a cylindrical detector and studying the sample films being cooled to LN and LHe temperatures
• Optimised neutron yield calculations from ($\alpha ,n$) reactions with the modified SOURCES4 code
• Constraining Gluonic Contact Interaction of a Neutrino-philic Dark Fermion at Hadron Colliders and Direct Detection Experiments
• Impact of extreme ultraviolet radiation on the scintillation of pure and xenon-doped liquid argon
• Fermionic sub-GeV Dark Matter from evaporating Primordial Black Holes at DarkSide-50
• A new hybrid gadolinium nanoparticles-loaded polymeric material for neutron detection in rare event searches
• Validation of electrodeposited 241Am alpha-particle sources for use in liquified gas detectors at cryogenic temperatures
• Development & Characterization of Electrodes for large-scale Xenon Time Projection Chambers
• Overview of the ESCAPE Dark Matter Test Science Project for Astronomers
• Analysis of the S1 triplet component in the DarkSide-50 experiment