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11.11.2019

First paper by CRESST on electromagnetic background published in EPJC

The CRESST experiment is one of the leading experiments sensitive to dark matter particles in the sub-GeV/c2 mass region. As we move our sensitivity towards lower masses, an understanding of the background composition becomes even more crucial. Many sources of radioactivity ranging from the detector material to activation through cosmic rays can mimic nuclear recoil scattering, the signal we are looking for in our experiment. That’s why it is important not only to protect the set-up with different layers of shielding, but also to go deep into the understanding of the origin of the background.

We are happy to present the first paper dedicated to this: “Geant4-based electromagnetic background model for the CRESST experiment”, published in The European Physical Journal C. The paper describes the first attempt to create an electromagnetic background model for the TUM40 detector module used in CRESST-II phase 2. The combination of internal, external radiogenic and cosmogenic sources simulated with the GEANT4 toolkit gives us the possibility to explain up to 68% of the background in the energy range between 1 and 40keV. The work  for this publication was performed by scientists working at HEPHY and TU Wien.

The next steps, which will allow us to improve our model, are a dedicated screening campaign of materials used in the experiment, and further studies of cosmogenic activation as well as investigation of the neutron background." 

CRESST