Nature of dark matter

Determine the nature of dark matter, including identifying its fundamental properties and interactions consistent with the null results from direct, indirect, and collider searches.

Background

The paper presents background modelling and radioassay measurements to support the QUEST-DMC superfluid helium-3 bolometer, a detector designed to probe sub-GeV mass, spin-dependent dark matter interactions. Understanding and reducing radiogenic and cosmogenic backgrounds is critical to improving sensitivity to rare dark matter scattering events.

This broader experimental effort is motivated by the longstanding unresolved issue in physics: despite extensive searches across multiple modalities, the fundamental nature of dark matter remains unknown. The work here contributes enabling technologies and background characterisation needed to address this overarching question.