![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/e104_1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMaxim Karmantzov<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maxim Karmantzov<\/p>\n
Putative dark matter particles with masses below around 1 MeV are not ruled out by astronomical observations, but they are difficult to detect directly. Now Laura Baudis at the University of Zurich and colleagues have performed a direct-detection experiment dedicated to exploring this mass range [1<\/a>]. The results provide new constraints on models of dark matter particles with masses as low as 30 keV\/c2.<\/p>\n Most direct-detection experiments have focused on dark matter whose masses overlap with those of known elementary particles. If dark matter particles are much lighter, they lack the energy to cause the excitation or ionization events that standard semiconductor photon detectors can see. In a 2022 proof of concept, researchers\u2014including some members of Baudis\u2019s team\u2014tested a device that\u2019s sensitive to lower-energy events: a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) (see Synopsis: Dark Matter Goes Down to the Wire<\/a>) [2<\/a>]. In SNSPDs, low-energy photons\u2014and, potentially, dark matter particles\u2014produce measurable changes in the devices\u2019 electronic properties by breaking up the Cooper pairs that carry the supercurrent.<\/p>\n Baudis and colleagues optimized their latest SNSPD for dark matter detection. In particular, they equipped it with superconducting microwires instead of nanowires to maximize its cross section. They also gave it a thin, planar geometry for direction-dependent sensitivity. Any dark matter signal should be stronger in the direction of the Sun\u2019s motion through the Milky Way, so this dependence on direction helps to filter out non-dark-matter events.<\/p>\n The researchers say that improvements to the technique could allow them to reach the threshold of 1 keV\/c2, below which dark matter models confront astrophysical and cosmological constraints.<\/p>\n \u2013Marric Stephens<\/p>\n Marric Stephens is a\u00a0Corresponding Editor for\u00a0Physics Magazine<\/a> based in Bristol, UK.<\/p>\n References<\/p>\n First Sub-MeV Dark Matter Search with the QROCODILE Experiment Using Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors<\/a><\/p>\n Laura Baudis, Alexander Bismark, Noah Brugger, Chiara Capelli, Ilya Charaev, Jose Cuenca Garc\u00eda, Guy Daniel Hadas, Yonit Hochberg, Judith K. Hohmann, Alexander Kavner, Christian Koos, Artem Kuzmin, Benjamin V. Lehmann, Severin N\u00e4geli, Titus Neupert, Bjoern Penning, Diego Ram\u00edrez Garc\u00eda, and Andreas Schilling<\/p>\n Phys. Rev. Lett. 135<\/b>, 081002 (2025)<\/a><\/p>\n Published August 20, 2025<\/p>\n Subject AreasAstrophysics<\/a>Particles and Fields<\/a>Related Articles\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a> More Articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 20, 2025• Physics 18, s104 Superconducting sensors can detect single low-energy photons. Researchers have now used this…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":166141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[492,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-166140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}