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The Oscura Experiment

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arxiv 2202.10518 v2 pith:Q7JOBMRA submitted 2022-02-21 astro-ph.IM

The Oscura Experiment

classification astro-ph.IM
keywords darkoscuraelectronsexperimentmatterdowneffortmasses
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The Oscura experiment will lead the search for low-mass dark matter particles using a very large array of novel silicon Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) with a threshold of two electrons and with a total exposure of 30 kg-yr. The R&D effort, which began in FY20, is currently entering the design phase with the goal of being ready to start construction in late 2024. Oscura will have unprecedented sensitivity to sub-GeV dark matter particles that interact with electrons, probing dark matter-electron scattering for masses down to 500 keV and dark matter being absorbed by electrons for masses down to 1 eV. The Oscura R&D effort has made some significant progress on the main technical challenges of the experiment, of which the most significant are engaging new foundries for the fabrication of the CCD sensors, developing a cold readout solution, and understanding the experimental backgrounds.

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Cited by 9 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. In situ cryogenic characterization of proton damage in thick p-channel skipper CCDs

    astro-ph.IM 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Thick p-channel skipper CCDs maintain excellent performance after cryogenic proton irradiation equivalent to ~10 years at L2, showing they remain radiation-hard in realistic deep-space conditions.

  2. Cosmogenic activation in detector materials at shallow depths

    physics.ins-det 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Calculations of tritium production in Ge/Si and 60Co in Cu at shallow depths with activation suppression factors for sites including SUF.

  3. Thermal Emission of Dark Photons from Earth's Core

    hep-ph 2026-06 conditional novelty 6.0

    Thermal dark-photon emission from Earth's core, recast onto SENSEI/DAMIC-M bounds, already constrains new ε parameter space; Oscura could improve by 2–3 orders of magnitude near 10^{-4} eV.

  4. Constraints on Axion-Like Particles with the Silicon Detector at a Nuclear Reactor

    hep-ph 2026-01 conditional novelty 6.0

    New 90% C.L. limits on the ALP–photon coupling in the 0.1–100 keV range are derived from Connie and Atucha-II reactor data via plasmon excitation in silicon; a 30 kg·yr Oscura-style run could improve on NEON by about tenfold.

  5. Freeze-in Production of Non-Abelian Millicharged Vector Dark Matter

    hep-ph 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0

    A hidden SU(2) gauge sector broken to a massless dark photon can produce vector dark matter via freeze-in with portal couplings near 10^-7.

  6. Direct Detection of Leptophobic Dark Matter with Electronic Collective Excitations

    hep-ph 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0

    Leptophobic dark matter can excite plasmons in silicon through hadronic loops, and SENSEI data now constrain its nucleon cross section down to ~1e-31 cm^2 in the sub-MeV mass range.

  7. New Thermal-Relic Targets for sub-GeV Dark Matter Direct Detection

    hep-ph 2026-03 conditional novelty 5.0

    For sub-GeV dark matter coupled to anomaly-free U(1) mediators, thermal freeze-out predicts electron-recoil cross sections that are already excluded for electrophilic mediators but still viable and discoverable for el...

  8. Light-tight skipper-CCDs for X-ray detection in space

    astro-ph.IM 2025-12 accept novelty 5.0

    50 nm and 100 nm aluminum coatings on skipper-CCDs suppress optical light by more than 99.6 percent from 650 to 1000 nm with no efficiency loss for 5.9 and 6.4 keV X-rays.

  9. Thermal Emission of Dark Photons from Earth's Core

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Estimates that Earth's core thermal emission of dark photons constrains new regions of the kinetic mixing parameter ε, with SENSEI/DAMIC-M already excluding some space and Oscura potentially improving by 2-3 orders of...