Low mass WIMP research and development

While SABRE looks to search for WIMPs in the traditional mass range – that is to say 10s to 100s of times as heavy as a proton – it is also possible that WIMPs are lighter, perhaps a fraction of the mass of a proton. 

If they are much lighter, the amount of energy they impart when colliding with a nucleus in the detector will be much smaller, and experiments like SABRE won’t be able to find them. The Centre is working to develop new kinds of WIMP detectors to probe the low mass WIMP range.  

Dilution Refrigerator, a device used to cool things to milliKelvin temperatures, about -273 degrees Celsius.

Some of the new ideas in this area involve cryogenics – which is the science of making things really, really cold (a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero). When matter becomes very cold, it can change in ways which make it extremely sensitive to very small amounts of energy, like the small amounts of energy that are expected to be imparted by an interaction with a low mass WIMP.

Cryogenic detectors, and other low mass WIMP detectors are a subject of ongoing research for the Centre.