Speakers
Description
The DAREDEVIL (DARk-mattEr-DEVIces-for-Low-energy-detection) is a new project aiming to
develop a novel class of detectors to study Dark Matter candidates with mass below 1 Gev/c^2. The
detection channel is DM-electron scattering, where the excitation energies of the electrons should
be matched to the transferred momenta. The only materials with energy gaps of eV or below are
special semiconductors, Dirac Semimetals, Weyl Semimetals, Scintillators. Such materials, already
explore from a theoretical point of view, will be implemented in a detector, has planned by the
DARDEVIL project. The first phase of the project aims at designing a novel class of gram-scale
detectors with meV threshold suitable for light DM-electron scattering detection. In order to achieve
the high performances needed for detecting such small energy depositions we will use these crystals
as absorbers in low temperature calorimeters with dual phonon and IR-photon readout.
In this contribution we present the very first results of a low temperature calorimeter based on GaAs
as the target crystal, operated at 15 mK coupled to a Neutron Transmutation Doped thermistor for
the phonon readout and facing a CdTeHg-based photon detector tuned to detect its IR scintillation
light.
