SENSEI

Dark Matter

SENSEI uses skipper CCDS to search for dark matter. When a particle interacts, it causes a small energy change which is captured by the CCD. The CCDs have millions of pixels, and SENSEI is able to count every electron within a pixel, leading to incredibly accurate measurements with no background noise.

Did you know?

• CCDs are most commonly used in digital cameras – although those ones are much smaller than the ones used in SENSEI.
• Members of the SENSEI collaboration were awarded the 2021 New Horizons in Physics Breakthrough Prize.
• The concept of a skipper CCD was first developed in the early 1990s, but technology only recently advanced enough to make building them possible.