Speaker
Description
The CRESST-III (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) experiment, located in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS, Italy), aims at the direct detection of light dark matter (DM) particles.
Scintillating CaWO$_4$ crystals operated as cryogenic detectors at mK temperatures are used as target material for elastic DM-nucleus scattering. The simultaneous measurement of the phonon signal from the CaWO$_4$ crystal and the emitted scintillation light in a separate cryogenic light detector provides particle discrimination on an event-by-event basis. The experiment, optimized for low-energy nuclear recoil detection, reached an unprecedented threshold of 30 eV for nuclear recoil energies and it is currently leading the field of low-mass dark matter search, for values as low as 160 MeV/c$^2$.
In this contribution, the current stage of the CRESST-III experiment, together with the most recent dark matter results will be presented. The perspective for the next phase of the experiment will be also discussed
