Latest observations on the low energy excess in CRESST-III

Abstract

The CRESST experiment observes an unexplained excess of events at low energies. In the current CRESST-III data-taking campaign we are operating detector modules with different designs to narrow down the possible explanations. In this work, we show first observations of the ongoing measurement, focusing on the comparison of time, energy and temperature dependence of the excess in several detectors. These exclude dark matter, radioactive backgrounds and intrinsic sources related to the crystal bulk as a major contribution.

10 pages, 5 figures; to be published in IDM2022 proceedings; corrected several minor typos

References in corpus (4)

• Searching for low-mass dark matter particles with a massive Ge bolometer operated above-ground
• EXCESS workshop: Descriptions of rising low-energy spectra
• Testing spin-dependent dark matter interactions with lithium aluminate targets in CRESST-III
• Cait: analysis toolkit for cryogenic particle detectors in Python

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• Observation of a low energy nuclear recoil peak in the neutron calibration data of the CRESST-III Experiment
• A Transition Edge Sensor Operated in Coincidence with a High Sensitivity Athermal Phonon Sensor for Photon Coupled Rare Event Searches
• Detector development for the CRESST experiment
• Spontaneous generation of athermal phonon bursts within bulk silicon causing excess noise, low energy background events and quasiparticle poisoning in superconducting sensors
• Particle background characterization and prediction for the NUCLEUS reactor CE$\nu$NS experiment
• A likelihood framework for cryogenic scintillating calorimeters used in the CRESST dark matter search
• Spontaneous damage annealing reactions as a possible source of low energy excess in semiconductor detectors
• High-Dimensional Bayesian Likelihood Normalisation for CRESST's Background Model
• Optimal operation of cryogenic calorimeters through deep reinforcement learning
• Prospect of the NUCLEUS Experiment at Chooz for Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering and New Physics Searches