Conveners
F3: Dark Matter and Rare Event Detectors
- Ben McAllister (Swinburne University of Technology)
The XENON project is a multi-stage research program that aims to identify the true nature of dark matter using two-phase liquid xenon time projection chambers of increasing size and sensitivity. The current phase, XENONnT, is operating at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. Designed to be a rapid upgrade of its predecessor XENON1T, XENONnT is expected to improve sensitivity to...
DarkSide-20k (DS-20k) is the next stage of the DarkSide program and will be a new generation experiment involving a global collaboration from all the current argon-based detectors. The experiment is designed as a 20-tonne fiducial mass dual phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr-TPC) filled with low radioactivity argon and instrumented with SiPM-based cryogenic photosensors. The...
Low background detectors, such as those used in direct dark matter searches, require high-efficient neutron veto to reject nuclear recoil backgrounds. Gadolinium-doped polymethyl methacrylate (Gd-PMMA) has emerged as a promising solid neutron tagging material, with high hydrogen content for moderating neutrons and gadolinium content for capturing thermal neutrons and exploiting subsequent...
The SABRE (Sodium iodide with Active Background REjection) experiment aims to detect an annual rate modulation from dark matter interactions in ultra-high purity NaI(Tl) crystals in order to provide a model independent test of the signal observed by DAMA/LIBRA. It is made up of two separate detectors; SABRE South located at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL), in regional...
Sterile neutrinos are a natural extension of the Standard Model of particle physics. If their mass is in the keV range, they are a viable dark matter candidate. One way to search for sterile neutrinos in a laboratory-based experiment is via tritium beta decay. A sterile neutrino with a mass up to 18.6 keV would manifest itself in the decay spectrum as a kink-like distortion. The objective of...
The KATRIN experiment aims at the direct measurement of the neutrino mass scale via precision endpoint spectroscopy of tritium β-decay. The current upper limit on the neutrino mass set by KATRIN is 0.8 eV/c² (90% C.L.) (Nature Physics 18, 160–166 (2022)). Despite advances in background reduction, the elevated background level prohibits to achieve its target sensitivity of 0.2 eV/c² (90%...
