Project description
Neutrinos and dark matter
Dark matter does not emit, absorb or reflect light, making it invisible and detectable only through its gravitational effects on visible matter. It influences the motion of galaxies and the overall structure of the universe. Its composition remains unknown, but it is believed to consist of particles that interact weakly with ordinary matter, similarly to neutrinos, subatomic particles that are electrically neutral, have a very small mass and are produced in various nuclear reactions such as the sun. The research team of the ERC-funded project DANAE aims to create a test experiment to make precise measurements of neutrino interactions and detect new, lighter dark matter particles that have not been found before.
Objective
In Particle Physics the research on neutrinos is continuously producing new results and further discoveries might just be around the corner. They could provide answers to crucial questions on how matter was created in the Universe or reveal the existence of new types of fundamental interactions between elementary particles. Possibly even more intriguing is the search for Dark Matter, an unknown form of matter that, according to astrophysical observations, outweighs the ordinary matter in our Universe by more than 5 times. Dark Matter particles have been searched for since 30 years, and invariably eluded discovery.
DANAE intends to enable unprecedented sensitivities in the study low energy neutrinos and in the search for Dark Matter, by measuring the tiny nuclear recoils that these particles induce in their passage through matter. The goal is to create a pilot experiment by introducing for the first time monolithic, and at the same time highly segmented, arrays of thousands multiplexed superconducting detectors. If successful, precision measurements of a recently discovered process, the coherent and elastic neutrino scattering off nuclei, could be made. In the Dark Matter field new hypothesized particles could be sensed, lighter than those searched and never found so far.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsneutrinos
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyastrophysicsdark matter
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
00185 Roma
Italy