Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Dark matter direct detection: status, results and future plans

Laura Baudis

TL;DR

The paper surveys the direct-detection landscape for dark matter, outlining the experimental principles, potential signals, and background challenges across a vast DM mass range. It reviews the main detector technologies—cryogenic bolometers, noble-liquid TPCs, bubble chambers, NaI scintillators, ionisation detectors, and directional and novel approaches—highlighting current experiments, performance, and future-generation plans such as multi-ton LXe detectors and directional prototypes. A core theme is the balance between lowering energy thresholds, achieving robust background rejection, and scaling target masses, all while anticipating irreducible neutrino backgrounds that will define future sensitivity limits. The work underscores the field’s broad, collaborative trajectory toward potential discovery in the coming decade, with diverse technologies offering complementary paths to probing WIMPs, light DM, and DM-electron interactions.

Abstract

Direct dark matter detection experiments search for rare signals induced by hypothetical, galactic dark matter particles in low-background detectors operated deep underground. I will briefly review the direct detection principles, the expected signals and backgrounds, and the main experimental techniques. I will then discuss the status of ongoing experiments aiming to discover new particles in the keV - TeV mass range, as well as future detectors and their sensitivity.

Dark matter direct detection: status, results and future plans

TL;DR

The paper surveys the direct-detection landscape for dark matter, outlining the experimental principles, potential signals, and background challenges across a vast DM mass range. It reviews the main detector technologies—cryogenic bolometers, noble-liquid TPCs, bubble chambers, NaI scintillators, ionisation detectors, and directional and novel approaches—highlighting current experiments, performance, and future-generation plans such as multi-ton LXe detectors and directional prototypes. A core theme is the balance between lowering energy thresholds, achieving robust background rejection, and scaling target masses, all while anticipating irreducible neutrino backgrounds that will define future sensitivity limits. The work underscores the field’s broad, collaborative trajectory toward potential discovery in the coming decade, with diverse technologies offering complementary paths to probing WIMPs, light DM, and DM-electron interactions.

Abstract

Direct dark matter detection experiments search for rare signals induced by hypothetical, galactic dark matter particles in low-background detectors operated deep underground. I will briefly review the direct detection principles, the expected signals and backgrounds, and the main experimental techniques. I will then discuss the status of ongoing experiments aiming to discover new particles in the keV - TeV mass range, as well as future detectors and their sensitivity.
Paper Structure (14 sections, 1 equation, 4 figures)

This paper contains 14 sections, 1 equation, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Dark matter candidates
  3. Principles of direct dark matter detection
  4. Signals and experimental techniques
  5. Backgrounds
  6. Experiments
  7. Cryogenic detectors
  8. Noble liquids
  9. Bubble chambers
  10. Sodium Iodide experiments
  11. Ionisation detectors
  12. Directional detectors
  13. Other technologies
  14. Conclusions

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: The broadly allowed mass range for dark matter candidates (not to scale). Inspired by Figure 3 from Lin:2019uvt.
  • Figure 2: (Left): Hypothetical dark matter particle candidates can scatter off atomic nuclei (NRs) or interact with the electrons in the atomic shell (ERs), via inelastic scattering or absorption. (Right): Direct dark matter detection requires input from several research fields.
  • Figure 3: Schematic view of the main experimental techniques employed in direct DM detection, together with ongoing or proposed experiments (not a complete list).
  • Figure 4: (Left): Time evolution of upper limits on the SI WIMP-nucleon cross section for a 50 GeV WIMP. (Right): Upper limits on the SI WIMP-nucleon cross section as a function of DM mass. The region where astrophysical neutrinos will start to be a limiting background is indicated in blue (neutrino fog). Figure from ParticleDataGroup:2024cfk, updated (PDG2025).