Superheated microdrops as cold dark matter detectors.

It is shown that, under realistic background considerations, an improvement in cold dark matter sensitivity of several orders of magnitude is expected from a detector based on superheated liquid droplets. Such devices are totally insensitive to minimum ionizing radiation while responsive to nuclear recoils of energies ; few keV. They operate on the same principle as the bubble chamber, but offer unattended, continuous, and safe operation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. @S0556-2821~96!50214-6#