Korea Invisible Mass Search
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The Korea Invisible Mass Search (KIMS; Korean: 한국 암흑물질 탐색실험), is a South Korean experiment searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), one of the candidates for dark matter. The KIMS project was also named such as the three founders all have the surname Kim; Kim Sun-kee, Kim Hongjoo, and Kim Yeongduk.[1] The experiments use CsI(Tl) crystals at Yangyang Underground Laboratory (Y2L), in tunnels from a preexisting underground power plant.[2] KIMS is supported by the Creative Research Initiative program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation. It is the first physics experiment located, and largely built, in Korea.[3]
Other research topics include detector development for a neutrinoless double beta decay search and the creation of an extreme low temperature diamond calorimeter.
The KIMS experiment was funded in 2000 to search for WIMP dark matter. To avoid the cost of creating a new tunnel for testing, the Yangyang Pumped Storage Power Plant belonging to Korea Middleland Power Co. in Yangyang, Korea was used. Construction was completed in 2003. The CsI(Tl) scintillating crystal used has a high light yield and is affordable for large mass. After a substantial effort for the initial setup and crystal development, KIMS began recording data in 2004 with one full-size 6 kg crystal.[2] A 4 crystal setup was run in 2005–2006 to optimize the WIMP search. In 2008, the 12 crystal array with 103.4 kg mass was completed and ran until December 2012 for a detector upgrade replacing the PMTs.
