Nuclear emulsions as a very high resolution detector for directional dark matter search

The use of nuclear emulsions in particle physics dates back to the very early stages. They are now used when an extremely high position resolution is required like in the search for short lived particles. The capability to detect nuclear recoils induced by WIMPs relies on the possibility to detect sub-micrometric trajectories. Recently nuclear emulsions with silver grains of 20 nm diameter were developed, opening the way for the reconstruction of nanometric particles. This challenging purpose requires the development of fully automated optical readout systems for a fast scanning of the emulsion films. This is meant for a pre-selection of recoil candidates. Once candidates have been identified, a fine grained X-ray microscope is used to detect the grains making up the tracks. We report here the present results on the current development along this line.