Orateur
Description
The existence of dark matter is firmly established by astrophysical and cosmological observations, yet its particle nature remains one of the most compelling open questions in physics. Among the proposed candidates, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are particularly well motivated by the so-called “WIMP miracle”: a weakly interacting, stable particle with electroweak-scale mass naturally reproduces the observed dark matter relic density through thermal freeze-out.
The DarkSide-20k experiment, currently under construction at LNGS, is a next-generation dual-phase Time Projection Chamber containing 50 tonnes of radiopure argon. Data taking is expected to begin in 2029 and continue for a decade. The experiment aims to achieve world-leading sensitivity to both low-mass WIMPs around 1 GeV and high-mass WIMPs above few tens of GeV. For high-mass WIMPs, the detection strategy relies on measuring scintillation and ionization signals produced by particle interactions in liquid argon, enabling three-dimensional reconstruction of the interaction point and fiducialization of the active volume to suppress external backgrounds. In addition, the time profile of the scintillation signal, known as Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD), is used to distinguish nuclear recoil signals from electron recoil backgrounds.
In this work, I present an overview of the search for high-mass WIMPs with DarkSide-20k, with particular focus on the impact of Cherenkov-induced backgrounds on PSD and their implications for the projected sensitivity of the experiment.