Search for Dark Matter
Recent articles regarding our work in the search for dark matter and other news from the DarkSide.
DarkSide-20k as a Neutrino Observatory
The goal of DarkSide-20k is ultimately to try and detect particle-like dark matter. But what if it could also detect neutrinos? Neutrinos are the lightest particles with the smallest mass of all the elementary particles within the Standard Model, so light that they were believed to be massless until about twenty years ago.
Search for sub-GeV Dark Matter
The lack of uncontroversial evidence of direct detection of heavy dark matter particles motivates the search for particle candidates outside the traditional mass range. In this regard, the sub-GeV/c2 mass region is well theoretically motivated and there are a plethora of theories providing viable DM candidates. Being predicted in a mass range which is much smaller than the mass of the nucleons, those light particles are usually searched for by looking at their scattering off, or absorption by, atomic electrons. In the following sections we will shortly describe light DM candidates that have been tested so far with DarkSide detectors.
Wimps!
One leading explanation for the existence of dark matter, motivated by supersymmetry theory, is that dark matter is comprised of as-yet-undiscovered Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) formed in the early universe and subsequently gravitationally clustered in association with baryonic matter.
The DarkSide Collaboration aims to unveil the nature of dark matter through liquid argon detector technology and innovative underground experiments. It is located at the Laboratori Nazional del Gran Sasso in L’Aquila, Italy.