Search for dark matter with the picasso experiment

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PICASSO* is a Dark Matter search experiment presently installed and taking data in the SNOLAB underground laboratory at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The quest for the mysterious missing mass of the Universe has become one of the big challenges for today's particle physics and cosmology. Astronomical observations show that only 1% of the matter of the Universe is luminous and there is now convincing evidence that 85% of all gravitationally traceable matter in the Universe is of a new exotic kind, different from the "ordinary" matter surrounding us with its protons, neutrons and electrons. This so-called Cold Dark Matter (CDM) is thought to consist of "neutralinos", neutral particles, about hundred to thousand times heavier than a proton and which interact extremely weakly with each other and ordinary matter.