Search for inelastic dark matter with the CDMS experiment

Abstract

The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (CDMS II) employs low-temperature germanium and silicon semiconductors to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) via their elastic scattering off the target nuclei. Results from a reanalysis of the entire five-tower data set with an exposure of 969 kg-days are presented. The analysis window was extended to a recoil energy of 150keV, and an improved surface-event background-rejection cut was defined to increase the sensitivity of the experiment to the inelastic dark matter (IDM) model. Three WIMP candidates were found between 25keV and 150keV. The probability to observe three or more surface-background events in this energy range is 9%. Due to the occurrence of these events the constraints on the IDM parameter space are slightly less stringent than from our previous analysis with a narrower energy window of 10-100 keV. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike Licence.