https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5223-9
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Results on MeV-scale dark matter from a gram-scale cryogenic calorimeter operated above ground
CRESST Collaboration
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, 80805, München, Germany
2
INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, 67010, Assergi, Italy
3
Physik-Department and Excellence Cluster Universe, Technische Universität München, 85747, Garching, Germany
4
Institut für Hochenergiephysik der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1050, Vienna, Austria
5
Atominstitut, Vienna University of Technology, 1020, Vienna, Austria
6
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, 72076, Tübingen, Germany
7
Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3RH, UK
* e-mail: strauss@mpp.mpg.de
Received:
26
July
2017
Accepted:
11
September
2017
Published online:
22
September
2017
Models for light dark matter particles with masses below 1 GeV/c
are a natural and well-motivated alternative to so-far unobserved weakly interacting massive particles. Gram-scale cryogenic calorimeters provide the required detector performance to detect these particles and extend the direct dark matter search program of CRESST. A prototype 0.5 g sapphire detector developed for the 
-cleus experiment has achieved an energy threshold of 
eV. This is one order of magnitude lower than for previous devices and independent of the type of particle interaction. The result presented here is obtained in a setup above ground without significant shielding against ambient and cosmogenic radiation. Although operated in a high-background environment, the detector probes a new range of light-mass dark matter particles previously not accessible by direct searches. We report the first limit on the spin-independent dark matter particle-nucleon cross section for masses between 140 and 500 MeV/c.
© The Author(s), 2017
