First Constraints from DAMIC-M on Sub-GeV Dark-Matter Particles Interacting with Electrons
I. J. Arnquist, N. Ávalos, D. Baxter, X. Bertou, N. Castelló-Mor, Á. Chavarría, J. Cuevas-Zepeda, J. Cortabitarte Gutiérrez, J. Duarte-Campderros, A. Dastgheibi-Fard, Olivier Deligny, C. De Dominicis, E. Estrada, N. Gadola, R. Gaïor, T. W. Hossbach, L. Iddir, Lama Khalil, B. Kilminster, A. Lantero-Barreda, I. Lawson, S. Lee, A. Letessier‐Selvon, P. Loaiza, A. Lopez-Virto, Ariel Matalon, Sravan Munagavalasa, Kellie McGuire, P. Mitra, D. Norcini, Georgios Papadopoulos, S. Paul, A. Piers, Paolo Privitera, Karthik Ramanathan, P. Robmann, M. Settimo, R. Smida, R. Thomas, M. Traina, I. Vila, R. Vilar, G. Warot, R. Yajur, J. P. Zopounidis
Abstract
We report constraints on sub-GeV dark matter particles interacting with electrons from the first underground operation of DAMIC-M detectors. The search is performed with an integrated exposure of 85.23 g days, and exploits the subelectron charge resolution and low level of dark current of DAMIC-M charge-coupled devices (CCDs). Dark-matter-induced ionization signals above the detector dark current are searched for in CCD pixels with charge up to 7e^{-}. With this dataset we place limits on dark matter particles of mass between 0.53 and 1000 MeV/c^{2}, excluding unexplored regions of parameter space in the mass ranges [1.6,1000] MeV/c^{2} and [1.5,15.1] MeV/c^{2} for ultralight and heavy mediator interactions, respectively.