The EDELWEISS-II collaboration has performed a direct search for WIMP dark matter with an array of ten 400 g heat-and-ionization cryogenic detectors equipped with interleaved electrodes for the rejection of near-surface events. Six months of continuous operation at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane have been achieved. The observation of one nuclear recoil candidate above 20 keV in an effective exposure of 144 kgd is interpreted in terms of limits on the cross-section of spin-independent interactions of WIMPs and nucleons. A cross-section of 1.0x10^-7 pb is excluded at 90%CL for a WIMP mass of 80 GeV/c2. This result demonstrates for the first time the very high background rejection capabilities of these simple and robust detectors in an actual WIMP search experiment. The future prospects for this experiment are also discussed.

Presented in APC
by Éric Armengaud (CEA)

Results from the Final Exposure of the CDMS II Experiment,
Z. Amhed et al (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.3592)

We report results from a blind analysis of the final data taken with the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (CDMS II) at the Soudan Underground Laboratory, Minnesota, USA. A total raw exposure of 612 kg-days was analyzed for this work. We observed two events in the signal region; based on our background estimate, the probability of observing two or more background events is 23%. These data set an upper limit on the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP)-nucleon elastic-scattering spin-independent cross- section of 7.0 × 10−44 cm2 for a WIMP of mass 70 GeV/c2 at the 90% confidence level. Combining this result with all previous CDMS II data gives an upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross-section of 3.8 × 10−44 cm2 for a WIMP of mass 70 GeV/c2. We also exclude new parameter space in recently proposed inelastic dark matter models.

Presented in APC by Bernard Sadoulet (UCB, Berkeley)