Dark matter and neutrino experiment with monolithic arrays of cryogenic detectors

Introduction

In Particle Physics, the research on neutrinos is continuously producing new results, and further discoveries might just be around the corner. They could provide answers to crucial questions on how matter was created in the Universe or reveal the existence of new types of fundamental interactions between elementary particles.

Dark Matter Exploration

Possibly even more intriguing is the search for Dark Matter, an unknown form of matter that, according to astrophysical observations, outweighs the ordinary matter in our Universe by more than 5 times. Dark Matter particles have been searched for over the past 30 years and have invariably eluded discovery.

Project Goals

DANAE intends to enable unprecedented sensitivities in the study of low energy neutrinos and in the search for Dark Matter by measuring the tiny nuclear recoils that these particles induce in their passage through matter.

Pilot Experiment

The goal is to create a pilot experiment by introducing, for the first time, monolithic and at the same time highly segmented arrays of thousands of multiplexed superconducting detectors.

Expected Outcomes

If successful, precision measurements of a recently discovered process, the coherent and elastic neutrino scattering off nuclei, could be made. In the Dark Matter field, new hypothesized particles could be sensed, which are lighter than those searched for and never found so far.