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Free keywords:
Physics, Instrumentation and Detectors, physics.ins-det, Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, astro-ph.IM
Abstract:
In the past decades, several detector technologies have been developed with
the quest to directly detect dark matter interactions and to test one of the
most important unsolved questions in modern physics. The sensitivity of these
experiments has improved with a tremendous speed due to a constant development
of the detectors and analysis methods, proving uniquely suited devices to solve
the dark matter puzzle, as all other discovery strategies can only indirectly
infer its existence. Despite the overwhelming evidence for dark matter from
cosmological indications at small and large scales, a clear evidence for a
particle explaining these observations remains absent. This review summarises
the status of direct dark matter searches, focussing on the detector
technologies used to directly detect a dark matter particle producing recoil
energies in the keV energy scale. The phenomenological signal expectations,
main background sources, statistical treatment of data and calibration
strategies are discussed.
