EDELWEISS

EDELWEISS (Expérience pour DEtecter Les WIMPs En Site Souterrain) is a dark matter search experiment located at the Modane Underground Laboratory in France.

The experiment uses cryogenic detectors, measuring both the phonon and ionization signals produced by particle interactions in germanium crystals.

Measurements of the rotation curves of spiral galaxies suggest it makes up the majority of the mass of galaxies; and precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation suggest it accounts for a significant fraction of the density of the Universe.

EDELWEISS is located in the Modane underground laboratory, in the Fréjus road tunnel between France and Italy, below 1800m of rock.

Simultaneous detection of ionization and heat with semiconductors at low temperature was an original idea by Lawrence M. Krauss, Mark Srednicki and Frank Wilczek.

[2] The results from the first phase of the experiment (EDELWEISS I) were published in 2005, excluding WIMP dark matter with an interaction cross-section above ≈10−6 pb (at ≈85 GeV).

The EDELWEISS logo
Fig A. EDELWEISS I results. With CDMS parameter space excluded as of 2004. DAMA result is located in green area and is disallowed.