SENSEI at SNOLAB: Single-Electron Event Rate and Implications for Dark Matter

SENSEI Collaboration; Itay M. Bloch; Ana M. Botti; Mariano Cababie; Gustavo Cancelo; Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara; Miguel Daal; Ansh Desai; Alex Drlica-Wagner; Rouven Essig; Juan Estrada; Erez Etzion; Guillermo Fernandez Moroni; Stephen E. Holland; Jonathan Kehat; Ian Lawson; Steffon Luoma; Aviv Orly; Santiago E. Perez; Dario Rodrigues; Nathan A. Saffold; Silvia Scorza; Miguel Sofo-Haro; Kelly Stifter; Javier Tiffenberg; Sho Uemura; Edgar Marrufo Villalpando; Tomer Volansky; Federico Winkel; Yikai Wu; Tien-Tien Yu

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.161002

SENSEI at SNOLAB: Single-Electron Event Rate and Implications for Dark Matter

Itay M. Bloch^1,2, Ana M. Botti ^3,4, Mariano Cababie^5,6,3, Gustavo Cancelo³, Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara⁷, Miguel Daal⁸, Ansh Desai⁹, Alex Drlica-Wagner^3,4,10, Rouven Essig¹¹ et al. (SENSEI Collaboration)

Rouven Essig¹¹, Juan Estrada³, Erez Etzion⁸, Guillermo Fernandez Moroni³, Stephen E. Holland¹², Jonathan Kehat⁸, Ian Lawson¹³, Steffon Luoma¹³, Aviv Orly⁸, Santiago E. Perez^3,14,15, Dario Rodrigues^14,15, Nathan A. Saffold³, Silvia Scorza¹⁶, Miguel Sofo-Haro^3,17, Kelly Stifter³, Javier Tiffenberg³, Sho Uemura³, Edgar Marrufo Villalpando⁴, Tomer Volansky⁸, Federico Winkel^14,15, Yikai Wu^11,18, and Tien-Tien Yu⁹ (SENSEI Collaboration)

¹Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
²Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
³Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, Illinois 60510, USA
⁴Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
⁵Institut für Hochenergiephysik der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1050 Wien–Austria
⁶Atominstitut, Technische Universität Wien, 1020 Wien–Austria
⁷Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México
⁸School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel
⁹Department of Physics and Institute for Fundamental Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA
¹⁰Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
¹¹C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA
¹²Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
¹³SNOLAB, Lively, ON P3Y 1N2, Canada
¹⁴Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Física, Buenos Aires, Argentina
¹⁵CONICET—Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires (IFIBA). Buenos Aires, Argentina
¹⁶Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LPSC-IN2P3, Grenoble 38000, France
¹⁷Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, CNEA/CONICET, Córdoba, Argentina
¹⁸Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 161002 – Published 25 April, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.161002

Abstract

We present results from data acquired by the SENSEI experiment at SNOLAB after a major upgrade in May 2023, which includes deploying 16 new sensors and replacing the copper trays that house the CCDs with a new light-tight design. We observe a single-electron event rate of $(1.39 \pm 0.11) \times 10^{- 5} e^{-} / pix / day$ , corresponding to $(39.8 \pm 3.1) e^{-} / gram / day$ . This is an order-of-magnitude improvement compared to the previous lowest single-electron rate in a silicon detector and the lowest for any photon detector in the wavelength range between near-infrared and ultraviolet. We use these data to obtain a 90% confidence level upper bound of $1.53 \times 10^{- 5} e^{-} / pix / day$ and to set constraints on sub-GeV dark matter candidates that produce single-electron events. We hypothesize that the data taken at SNOLAB in the previous run, with an older tray design for the sensors, contained a larger rate of single-electron events due to light leaks. We test this hypothesis using data from the SENSEI detector located in the MINOS cavern at Fermilab.

Physical Review Letters

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