Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers

The Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers (CRESST) is a dark matter experiment to detect WIMPs. The effort is a European collaboration, with the experiments carried out in an underground site at Gran Sasso, Italy. The experiment assumes the presumed particle interacts with baryonic matter, producing a very small amount of heat, but the interactions are very improbable, thus rare. The current version monitors small samples of crystallized CaWO₄ within a heavily-shielded environment, also monitoring detecting unrelated reactions so they can be discounted. It operates cryogenically to minimize thermal effects, measuring the temperature-increase due to the interaction, using transition edge sensor (TES)-based microcalorimeters.

Three versions of the experiment have been run: CRESST-I (in 2000) and CRESST-II (2009-2011) and CRESST-III (2016-2018, with plans for continuation with an upgraded version). Accomplishments so far have been gaining experience regarding technical goals for to reducing and/or detecting unrelated reactions.