Status of the DAMIC-M dark matter experiment*

The DAMIC-M (DArk Matter In CCDs at Modane) experiment will exploit the sub-electron resolution capabilities of skipper charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for sub-GeV dark matter particles with a 1 kg-year exposure. The experiment will operate 1700 m below the Mount Fréjus peak in Modane, France, at the Laboratorie Souterrain de Modane (LSM), with data-taking scheduled to commence in 2024. With an eV-scale energy threshold, DAMIC-M will advance by several orders of magnitude the exploration of the dark matter particle hypothesis, in particular of candidates pertaining to the so-called hidden sector. To inform the design and operation of the upcoming dark matter search, including meeting the 0.1 dru background rate necessary to achieve its sensitivity goals, in early 2022 the DAMIC Collaboration installed and has since been operating a prototype detector, the Low Background Chamber (LBC), in LSM. We will report the status of the DAMIC-M experiment and results thus far obtained from LBC commissioning data.