Direct Dark Matter Searches and the EDELWEISS-II Experiment

Direct searches for Dark Matter are experiment dedicated to the observation of the energetic recoiling ions produced by the scattering of WIMP particles from our galactic halo on terrestrial targets. The status and prospects of some currently running experiments are presented, together with new preliminary results of the experiments EDELWEISS-II.Comment: Talk presented at XLIVth Rencontres de Moriond, Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories Session, La Thuile, Italy, March 2009, to appear in the proceeding

Surface effects on the statistics of the local density of states in metallic nanoparticles: manifestation on the NMR spectra

In metallic nanoparticles, shifts in the ionization energy of surface atoms with respect to bulk atoms can lead to surface bands. Within a simple Tight Binding model we find that the projection of the electronic density of states on these sites presents two overlapping structures. One of them is characterized by the level spacing coming from bulk states and the other arises from the surface states. In very small particles, this contributes to an over-broadening of the NMR absorption spectra, determined by the Knight shift distribution of magnetic nuclei. We compare our calculated Knight shifts with experiments on aluminum nanoparticles, and show that the deviation of the scaling law as a function of temperature and particle size can be explained in terms of surface states.Comment: 1 tar.gz fil

Status and prospects of the EDELWEISS direct WIMP search

International audienc

Dark Matter direct detection searches

International audienc

Direct search for WIMP dark matter

We will review the experimental aspects of the direct search for WIMP dark matter. In thin search, one looks in a terrestrial target for nuclear recoils produced by the impacts with WIMPs from the galatic halo. After describing the different search strategies and review the currently running experiments and the prospects of future experiment