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Author: Daniel E. Gastler Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
Abstract: Within our current understanding of the makeup of the universe, dark matter makes up 25% of the total energy and over 80% of the matter in the universe. Little is known about the makeup of dark matter, but its existence has been indirectly measured using the rotation curves of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the Cosmic Microwave Background. To gain a greater understanding of this component of the universe, direct detection of dark matter is a major objective in particle astrophysics. One popular candidate for dark matter is the weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. The allowed rate of interaction between a WIMP and normal matter is extremely low, requiring new detection technologies with greater sensitivity to be explored. Though several experiments have already been conducted, no direct detection experiment has unambiguously identified a dark matter signal. This work explores the use of noble liquids, in a single liquid phase design, to detect single scatters of dark matter particles. The goal of current experiments is to investigate matter-dark-matter interaction cross-sections down to 10–45cm2. With that in mind, the MiniCLEAN detector has been designed with a 500 kg liquid argon detector volume and will be viewed by a spherical tt configuration of 92 photo-multiplier tubes. In order to determine the ability for single phase noble liquid to detect nuclear recoils from dark matter, several R&D experiments have been performed. These experiments undertook the measurement of how dark-matter-like nuclear recoils and background-like electronic recoils behave in liquid argon. In addition to reviewing the measurements of pulse shape discrimination and other noble liquid properties, my measurement of the scintillation efficiency is described. The scintillation efficiency characterizes the differing energy responses for nuclear and electron recoils. This was the first measurement of the scintillation efficiency in liquid argon for nuclear recoils over a wide energy range. Additionally, this work covers the design and testing of the front-end electronics and data acquisition software I developed for the MiniCLEAN experiment. This system has been designed to record and process thousands of physics events per second and has been tested using novel simulators, that I developed, that approximately represent the expected PMT signals of the MiniCLEAN detector.
Author: Daniel E. Gastler Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
Abstract: Within our current understanding of the makeup of the universe, dark matter makes up 25% of the total energy and over 80% of the matter in the universe. Little is known about the makeup of dark matter, but its existence has been indirectly measured using the rotation curves of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the Cosmic Microwave Background. To gain a greater understanding of this component of the universe, direct detection of dark matter is a major objective in particle astrophysics. One popular candidate for dark matter is the weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. The allowed rate of interaction between a WIMP and normal matter is extremely low, requiring new detection technologies with greater sensitivity to be explored. Though several experiments have already been conducted, no direct detection experiment has unambiguously identified a dark matter signal. This work explores the use of noble liquids, in a single liquid phase design, to detect single scatters of dark matter particles. The goal of current experiments is to investigate matter-dark-matter interaction cross-sections down to 10–45cm2. With that in mind, the MiniCLEAN detector has been designed with a 500 kg liquid argon detector volume and will be viewed by a spherical tt configuration of 92 photo-multiplier tubes. In order to determine the ability for single phase noble liquid to detect nuclear recoils from dark matter, several R&D experiments have been performed. These experiments undertook the measurement of how dark-matter-like nuclear recoils and background-like electronic recoils behave in liquid argon. In addition to reviewing the measurements of pulse shape discrimination and other noble liquid properties, my measurement of the scintillation efficiency is described. The scintillation efficiency characterizes the differing energy responses for nuclear and electron recoils. This was the first measurement of the scintillation efficiency in liquid argon for nuclear recoils over a wide energy range. Additionally, this work covers the design and testing of the front-end electronics and data acquisition software I developed for the MiniCLEAN experiment. This system has been designed to record and process thousands of physics events per second and has been tested using novel simulators, that I developed, that approximately represent the expected PMT signals of the MiniCLEAN detector.
Author: Thomas S. Caldwell (Jr.) Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
A variety of experimental efforts are underway aimed towards direct detection of dark matter through observation of rare scattering of WIMPs in terrestrial detectors. Single phase liquid argon detectors are an appealing WIMP detection technique due to the scintillation properties of liquid argon and the scalability of the single phase approach. The MiniCLEAN dark matter detector is a single phase liquid argon scintillation scintillation detector with a 500 kg active mass. The modular design offers 4[pi] coverage with 92 optical cassettes, each containing TPB coated acrylic and a cryogenic photomultiplier tube. The MiniCLEAN detector has recently completed construction at SNOLAB. The detector is currently being commissioned, and will soon begin operation with the liquid argon target. Utilizing advanced pulse-shape discrimination techniques, MiniCLEAN will probe the WIMP-nucleon cross section parameter space to the level of 10-44 cm2 and demonstrate the pulse-shape discrimination required for next generation experiments capable of further probing the WIMP parameter space in search of WIMP dark matter.
Author: Yixiong Meng Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
Cosmological and Astrophysical observations provide compelling evidences for the existence of dark matter in the universe. One class of dark matter candidates, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), has been predicted in many particle physics theories. Direct detection experiments using dual- phase liquid noble element detectors report the best sensitivities to the detection of the dark matter particles. The next generation direct detection experiments using the same technology, are actively been built and expected to give a factor of 100 improvement on the current best sensitivity. This thesis discusses the measurement of nuclear recoils in a dual-phase liquid argon detector using a bunched neutron beam generated by linear accelerator facility at accelerator laboratory in Notre Dame University. Nuclear recoils of en- ergy ranging from 10.8 keVnr to 49.9 keVnr are measured under different drift field configurations. An electric field quenching on nuclear recoils in liquid argon is dis- covered and quantified for the first time. This quenching effect is also found to be drift field and recoil energy dependent. By varying the drift field amplitude from 100 V/cm to 1000 V/cm for each nuclear recoil energy, the quenching effect are measured as a function of nuclear recoil energy and drift field amplitude. Results from this measurement is used in the direct dark matter detection experiment to calculate the final sensitivity of direct dark matter search. A separate work on the optimization of detector design for the XENON1T detector is also discussed in detail. Finite element simulation tool is used to design and optimize the electric field in XENON1T time projection chamber. As part of the design of XENON1T detector, electron transparency across metal grids of different geometrical configurations are also studied.
Author: Benjamin R. Schlitzer Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The nature of dark matter remains one of the most significant open questions in modern physics, despite the large body of astrophysical and cosmological evidence supporting its existence. The Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) is a well-motivated candidate particle with mass in the range 1 GeV/c2 - 100 TeV/c2 and coupling to Standard Model matter at or below the weak scale. If WIMPs do exist, they should occasionally interact with baryonic particles and leave behind a small amount of energy. DarkSide is a phased experimental program which aims to detect the interaction of a WIMP with a liquid argon target in a dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC). In order to make a WIMP discovery, an accurate understanding of the signal region is required. To this end, small-scale experiments which measure the detector response to a recoiling argon nucleus (NR) or scattering with atomic electrons (ER) are critical in establishing results of the large-scale direct detection experiments. The Argon Response to Ionization and Scintillation (ARIS) experiment was designed to characterize liquid argon's response to both NR and ER events at low recoil energies using a small dual-phase TPC. This work presents a complete chronology of the ARIS experiment and analysis of the collected data. A detailed description of the design of the ARIS TPC and related subsystems is given, as well as an account of the commissioning and calibration performed at the University of California, Los Angeles. The inverse-kinematics neutron source LICORNE was used at the Institute De Physique Nucléaire Orsay to bombard the ARIS TPC with collimated low energy neutrons. Neutron detectors surrounding the TPC were used to tag events which scattered in the TPC at selected angles, and the resulting data were used to characterize both NR and ER events at tightly constrained recoil energies. A description of the low-level reconstruction and data selection cuts is given, as well as corrections made due to trigger efficiency and vertical position in the TPC. ER data were analyzed to provide an improved measurement of the linearity of LAr light yield for incident [gamma]/[beta] particles with energies below 511 keV. ARIS measured a constant light yield to within 1.6% in the [41.5, 511] keV recoil energy range. The linearity of the ER scintillation response measured by ARIS has also been used to derive the spectral shape of forbidden 39Ar [beta] decay, which is a background intrinsic to liquid argon. The NR data were analyzed to measure the relative scintillation efficiency for recoils between [7.1, 117.8] keV, and were in good agreement with the previous SCENE results at low recoil energy. The DarkSide collaboration has used ARIS results to precisely model the response of nuclear recoils in liquid argon in both field-on and field-off configurations. In addition to the characterization of argon response, this work presents an optimization of the electric fields used to drift ionization electrons in DarkSide TPCs. The relevant electrostatics models used by COMSOL simulation software to approximate electric field behavior are described, as well as a technique developed to quantify field uniformity in the TPC. Then, the uniformity of the electric field is optimized for several possible TPC design changes, including the fiducial radius, the first shaping ring voltage, and the cross-sectional geometry of shaping rings. This work was supervised by Dr. Emilija Pantic, and was completed in collaboration with both members of the DarkSide collaboration as well as scientists at the University of California, Davis.
Author: Elena Aprile Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 3527609636 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
This book discusses the physical properties of noble fluids, operational principles of detectors based on these media, and the best technical solutions to the design of these detectors. Essential attention is given to detector technology: purification methods and monitoring of purity, information readout methods, electronics, detection of hard ultra-violet light emission, selection of materials, cryogenics etc. The book is mostly addressed to physicists and graduate students involved in the preparation of fundamental next generation experiments, nuclear engineers developing instrumentation for national nuclear security and for monitoring nuclear materials.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Here, the DarkSide experiment is designed for the direct detection of Dark Matter with a double phase liquid Argon TPC operating underground at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. The TPC is placed inside a 30 tons liquid organic scintillator sphere, acting as a neutron veto, which is in turn installed inside a 1 kt water Cherenkov detector. The current detector is running since November 2013 with a 50 kg atmospheric Argon fill and we report here the first null results of a Dark Matter search for a (1422 ± 67) kg.d exposure. This result correspond to a 90% CL upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon cross section of 6.1 × 10-44 cm2 (for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c2) and it's currently the most sensitive limit obtained with an Argon target.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Liquid argon is a bright scintillator with potent particle identification properties, making it an attractive target for direct-detection dark matter searches. The DarkSide-50 dark matter search here reports the first WIMP search results obtained using a target of low-radioactivity argon. DarkSide-50 is a dark matter detector, using a two-phase liquid argon time projection chamber, located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. The underground argon is shown to contain Ar39 at a level reduced by a factor (1.4 ± 0.2) × 103 relative to atmospheric argon. Here, we report a background-free null result from (2616 ± 43) kg d of data, accumulated over 70.9 live days. When combined with our previous search using an atmospheric argon, the 90% C.L. upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross section, based on zero events found in the WIMP search regions, is 2.0 × 10-44 cm2 (8.6 × 10-44 cm2, 8.0 × 10-43 cm2) for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c2 (1 TeV/c2, 10 TeV/c2).
Author: Paolo Agnes Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
A wide range of observational evidence suggests that the matter content of the Universe is dominated by a non-baryonic and non-luminous component: dark matter. One of the most favored candidate for dark matter is a big-bang relic population of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The DarkSide program aims to the direct detection of WIMPs with a dual-phase liquid argon TPC and a background free exposure. The first phase of the experiment, DarkSide-50, is running since Oct 2013 and has (46 ± 0.7) kg active mass. A first run, with an atmospheric argon fill (AAr), provided the most sensitive limit ever obtained by an argon-based experiment. The current run, with an underground argon fill (UAr, depleted in Ar-39), represents a milestone towards the construction of DarkSide-20k, a low-background dual-phase TPC with a fiducial mass of 20 t. This work is been mainly devoted to the description of G4DS, the DarkSide Monte Carlo simulation, and to its applications. G4DS is a GEANT4-based simulation, it provides the geometry description of each detector of the DarkSide program, it is tuned to reproduce the DarkSide-50 response at the percent level and incorporates a custom model for ionization and scintillation mechanisms in liquid argon, tuned on real data. The principal applications of the simulation include the estimate of the neutron and gamma backgrounds for DarkSide-50, the measurement of the Ar-39 depletion factor in UAr with respect to AAr and the design studies for DarkSide-20k.
Author: Daniel E. Gastler
Author: Daniel E. Gastler
Author: Thomas S. Caldwell (Jr.)
Author: Yixiong Meng
Author: Benjamin R. Schlitzer
Author: Elena Aprile
Author: 
Author: 
Author: Boccone Vittorio
Author: Paolo Agnes
Author: Walter Hugh Lippincott