Download or read book Light Yield in Liquid Argon for Dark Matter Detection written by William Creus and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Study on the Scintillation Yield of Liquid Argon Dark Matter Detector written by Chu Hao and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Characterization of Liquid Argon Response for the Direct Detection of Dark Matter written by Benjamin R. Schlitzer and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Light Readout for a 1 Ton Liquid Argon Dark Matter Detector written by Boccone Vittorio and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Direct Detection of Dark Matter with Liquid Argon and Neon written by Walter Hugh Lippincott and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Direct Detection of Dark Matter with Liquid Argon and Neon written by Walter Hugh Lippincott and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Design of Single Phase Liquid Argon Detectors for Dark Matter Searches written by Daniel E. Gastler and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Noble Gas Detectors written by Elena Aprile and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-02-27 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Searching for Dark Matter with Single Phase Liquid Argon written by Thomas S. Caldwell (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Direct Search for Dark Matter by Using Dual phase Liquid Xenon Detector and Measurement of Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon written by Yixiong Meng and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Using MiniCLEAN and Measurements of Microphysical Material Properties in the Vacuum Ultraviolet Regime to Inform Next generation Dark Matter and Neutrino Detectors written by Christopher Pete Benson and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many compelling pieces of indirect evidence pointing to the existence of dark matter. While a confirmed and direct signature of dark matter has yet to be observed, many theoretical models have been developed in an attempt to explain the indirect evidence and to provide phenomenological models that can be tested with targeted experiments. The WIMP is a well-motivated dark matter candidate currently being sought for by several experiments. A variety of detector technologies are utilized, including liquid noble detectors, to look for WIMP scattering as a direct signature of dark matter. The CLEAN experiment is a proposed single-phase, monolithic, large-scale liquid argon experiment designed to look for high-mass WIMPs. A liquid neon target could be exchanged with the argon target to study solar neutrinos and to test the A2 dependence of a possible dark matter signal. Before scaling up to the multi-tonne scale of the full CLEAN detector, the design philosophy and background rejection capabilities required for the next-generation project are being tested using the MiniCLEAN prototype. As of mid-2018, MiniCLEAN has been constructed at SNOLAB and is currently being filled with natural liquid argon for a dark matter run. Following a short dark matter run, MiniCLEAN will be spiked with elevated levels of 39Ar to test the scaling limits of pulse shape discrimination, the primary method for electronic background rejection. These results will inform existing experiments and the next-generation of large-scale liquid argon detectors. A good understanding of light propagation is critical for optical experiments such as CLEAN, whose event reconstruction and background rejection relies primarily on scintillation light collection. This work presents two classes of complementary results which are expected to improve the modeling of scintillation light collection in current and future neutrino and dark matter detectors. These are, first, the dependence of the scintillation light time structure (triplet lifetime) and relative light yield of gaseous argon as a function of impurity level and, second, the measurement of several parameters critical to constructing a microphysically-motivated model of tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB) wavelength shifting thin films - a technology which is commonly used in many existing and proposed liquid noble gas experiments.
Download or read book Internal Liquid Argon Purification System for Liquid Argon Dark Matter Detectors written by Brooke Astor and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Study of Surface Background on Wavelength Shifters in Liquid Argon Dark Matter Detector written by Zhiming Shi and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A G NARRLI Effort written by Tenzing Henry Yatish Joshi and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liquid argon has long been used for particle detection due to its attractive drift properties, ample abundance, and reasonable density. The response of liquid argon to low-energy (100-10,000 eV) interactions is, however, largely unexplored. Weakly interacting massive particles such as neutrinos and hypothetical dark-matter particles (WIMPs) are predicted to coherently scatter on atomic nuclei, leaving only an isolated low-energy nuclear recoil as evidence. The response of liquid argon to low-energy nuclear recoils must be studied to determine the sensitivity of liquid argon based detectors to these unobserved interactions. Detectors sensitive to coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering may be used to monitor nuclear reactors from a distance, to detect neutrinos from supernova, and to test the predicted behavior of neutrinos. Additionally, direct detection of hypothetical weakly interacting dark matter would be a large step toward understanding the substance that accounts for nearly 27% of the universe. In this dissertation I discuss a small dual-phase (liquid-gas) argon proportional scintillation counter built to study the low-energy regime and several novel calibration and characterization techniques developed to study the response of liquid argon to low-energy (100-10,000 eV) interactions.
Download or read book Results from the First Use of Low Radioactivity Argon in a Dark Matter Search written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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).
Download or read book Characterisation of Liquid Xenon and Argon as Targets for Direct Dark Matter Detection written by Konstantinos Mavrokoridis and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book DarkSide Search for Dark Matter written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DarkSide staged program utilizes a two-phase time projection chamber (TPC) with liquid argon as the target material for the scattering of dark matter particles. Efficient background reduction is achieved using low radioactivity underground argon as well as several experimental handles such as pulse shape, ratio of ionization over scintillation signal, 3D event reconstruction, and active neutron and muon vetos. The DarkSide-10 prototype detector has proven high scintillation light yield, which is a particularly important parameter as it sets the energy threshold for the pulse shape discrimination technique. The DarkSide-50 detector system, currently in commissioning phase at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory, will reach a sensitivity to dark matter spin-independent scattering cross section of 10-45 cm2 within 3 years of operation.
