From 2–6 June 2025, the Astrocent team participated in the DarkSide-20k summer collaboration meeting, held in Geremeas, Sardinia. This annual gathering brought together researchers and engineers from institutions around the world to discuss progress, challenges, and plans for the DarkSide-20k experiment — one of the most advanced dark matter search projects currently underway.
Astrocent is a contributor to the DarkSide-20k collaboration, with many of our team members actively involved in the design and development of the experiment’s cutting-edge technologies. These include low-background electronics, ultra-sensitive photodetectors, data acquisition systems, and other components essential for identifying extremely rare signals from potential dark matter interactions.
What is DarkSide-20k?
DarkSide-20k is a next-generation dark matter detector being developed at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. It is designed to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) — one of the most promising candidates for dark matter — using a dual-phase argon time projection chamber (TPC) filled with 20 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid argon.
One of the experiment’s key innovations is the use of argon sourced from underground reservoirs, which contains dramatically less radioactive isotope ^39Ar compared to atmospheric argon. This significantly reduces background noise, enhancing the sensitivity of the detector to rare events.
DarkSide-20k builds on the success of earlier phases, including DarkSide-50, and aims to push the search for dark matter to unprecedented levels of sensitivity. If WIMPs exist within the range currently allowed by theory, DarkSide-20k could be the experiment that finds them.
