DarkSide

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is planning, building and operating a series of liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) that are employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The detectors are filled with liquid argon from underground sources[1] in order to exclude the radioactive isotope 39
Ar
, which makes up one in every 1015 (quadrillion) atoms in atmospheric argon.[2] The Darkside-10 (DS-10) prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 (DS-50) experiment has been operating since 2013. Darkside-20k (DS-20k) with 20 tonnes of liquid argon is being planned as of 2019.

Darkside-10

The Darkside-10 prototype detector had 10 kg of liquid argon. It was built at Princeton University and operated there for seven months, after which it was transported to Gran Sasso National Laboratory in 2011. The detector operated in Gran Sasso 2011-2012.

Status

Darkside-50 has 46 kg argon target mass. A 3-year run is planned and ton-scale expansion has been proposed.

Initial results using a month of running were reported in 2014.[3] Spin-independent limits were set using 1422 kg×days of exposure to atmospheric argon. A cross section limit of 6.1×10−44 cm2 for a 100 Gev WIMP was found.

Members

The following institutions' physics departments include members of DarkSide:

See also

References

  1. Lofholm, Nancy (5 October 2012). "Colorado argon will be at the heart of dark matter experiment". Denver Post.
  2. "Low-background Argon from underground reservoir". DarkSide collaboration. Archived from the original on 2016-07-23.
  3. Agnes, P.; et al. (2015). "First Results from the DarkSide-50 Dark Matter Experiment at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso". Physics Letters B. 743 (456): 456. arXiv:1410.0653. Bibcode:2015PhLB..743..456A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2015.03.012.

Publications

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