Contributor info: Mr Steven Lee

Steven J. Lee

SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 030 (2023) · published 4 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Nuclear recoils in crystal detectors generate radiation damage in the form of crystal defects that can be measured in scientific-grade CCDs as local hot spots of leakage current stimulated by temperature increases in the devices. In this proceeding, we use a neutron source to generate defects in DAMIC-M CCDs, and using increases in leakage current at different temperatures, we demonstrate a procedure for identifying crystal defects in the CCDs of the DAMIC-M experiment. This is the first time that individual defects generated from nuclear recoils have been studied. This technique could be used to distinguish nuclear recoils from electron recoils in some energy ranges, which would improve the ability of CCD detectors to search for weakly interacting dark matter.

Isaac J. Arnquist, Nicolas Avalos, Philippe Bailly, David Baxter, Xavier Bertou, Mircea Bogdan, Christian Bourgeois, J. Brandt, Arnaud Cadiou, Nuria Castelló-Mor, Alvaro E. Chavarria, Marcel Conde, Nicholas J. Corso, J. C. Gutiérrez, Julian Cuevas-Zepeda, Ali Dastgheibi-Fard, Claudia De Dominicis, Olivier Deligny, R. Desani, Marc Dhellot, Jean-Jacques Dormard, Jordi Duarte-Campderros, E. Estrada, D. Florin, N. Gadola, R. Gaïor, J. González Sánchez, Todd W. Hossbach, Michael Huehn, Latifa Khalil, Ben Kilminster, Agustin Lantero-Barreda, Ian Lawson, Hervé Lebbolo, Steven Lee, Pascal Leray, Antoine Letessier-Selvon, Pia Loaiza, Amparo Lopez-Virto, David Martin, Ariel Matalon, Kellie McGuire, T. Milleto, Pitam Mitra, David M. Martin, S. Munagavalasa, Danielle Norcini, Cory T. Overman, Giorgos Papadopoulos, S. Paul, David Peterson, Alexander Piers, Olivier Pochon, Paolo Privitera, Karthik Ramanathan, Denis Reynet, Peter Robmann, Ryan Roehnelt, Mariangela Settimo, Radomir Smida, Ben Stillwell, Ryan Thomas, Michelangelo Traina, Philippe Vallerand, Tim Van Wechel, Ivan Vila, Rocio V. Cortabitarte, Achim Vollhardt, Guillaume Warot, D. Wolf, Rachana Yajur, J-P. Zopounidis

SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 014 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The DAMIC-M (DArk Matter In CCDs at Modane) experiment employs thick, fully depleted silicon charged-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for dark matter particles with a target exposure of 1 kg-year. A novel skipper readout implemented in the CCDs provides single electron resolution through multiple non-destructive measurements of the individual pixel charge, pushing the detection threshold to the eV-scale. DAMIC-M will advance by several orders of magnitude the exploration of the dark matter particle hypothesis, in particular of candidates pertaining to the so-called "hidden sector." A prototype, the Low Background Chamber (LBC), with 20g of low background Skipper CCDs, has been recently installed at Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane and is currently taking data. We will report the status of the DAMIC-M experiment and first results obtained with LBC commissioning data.