STATUS OF THE EDELWEISS EXPERIMENT

Abstract The status of the EDELWEISS experiment is presented. First tests of a prototype detector of the “1 kg” stage show an event rate before rejection of ≈2 evt/kg/keV/day above E >20 keV, a factor ≈10 improvement compared to previous runs. An unexpected category of events is evidenced and used to interpret the “bump” events observed by the UKDMC and Saclay NaI WIMP detection experiments. Finally, the short-term perspectives of the “1 kg” stage, which should allow to sample realistic SUSY models, and the main characteristics of the EDELWEISS-II experiment are described.