Massive liquid Ar and Xe detectors for direct Dark Matter searches

A novel experiment for direct searches of the Dark Matter with liquid argon double-phase chamber with a mass of liquid Ar up to several hundred tons is proposed. To suppress the b-, g- and n0- backgrounds, the comparison of scintillation and ionization signals for every event is suggested. The addition in liquid Ar of photosensitive Ge(CH3)4 or C2H4 and suppression of triplet component of scintillation signals ensures the detection of scintillation signals with high efficiency and provides a complete suppression of the electron background. For the detection of photoelectrons and ionization electrons, highly stable and reliable GEM detectors must be used.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Wire GEM detector

A wire GEM (WGEM) detector with a gas gap between meshes was constructed. The detector provides the amplification 5x10E5 for the gas mixture of Ar +20% CO2 at atmospheric pressure. As compared with well-known GEM detectors produced by perforation the plastic plate metalized on both sides the WGEM does not suffer from breakdowns between its electrodes and the effect of accumulation of charges on holes walls is absent. As a result the WGEM has high reliability and stability.Comment: Presented at the RD51 Collaboration Meeting, CERN, November 2009, submitted to the Prib. Tech. Expe

RETGEM with polyvinylchloride (PVC) electrodes

This paper presents a new design of the RETGEM (Resistive Electrode Thick GEM) based on electrodes made of a polyvinylchloride material (PVC). Our device can operate with gains of 10E5 as a conventional TGEM at low counting rates and as RPC in the case of high counting rates without of the transit to the violent sparks. The distinct feature of present RETGEM is the absent of the metal coating and lithographic technology for manufacturing of the protective dielectric rms. The electrodes from PVC permit to do the holes by a simple drilling machine. Detectors on a RETGEM basis could be useful in many fields of an application requiring a more cheap manufacturing and safe operation, for example, in a large neutrino experiments, in TPC, RICH systems.Comment: Presented at the RD51 Collaboration Meeting, CERN, November 200

Double Quantum Dots in Carbon Nanotubes

We study the two-electron eigenspectrum of a carbon-nanotube double quantum dot with spin-orbit coupling. Exact calculation are combined with a simple model to provide an intuitive and accurate description of single-particle and interaction effects. For symmetric dots and weak magnetic fields, the two-electron ground state is antisymmetric in the spin-valley degree of freedom and is not a pure spin-singlet state. When double occupation of one dot is favored by increasing the detuning between the dots, the Coulomb interaction causes strong correlation effects realized by higher orbital-level mixing. Changes in the double-dot configuration affect the relative strength of the electron-electron interactions and can lead to different ground state transitions. In particular, they can favor a ferromagnetic ground state both in spin and valley degrees of freedom. The strong suppression of the energy gap can cause the disappearance of the Pauli blockade in transport experiments and thereby can also limit the stability of spin-qubits in quantum information proposals. Our analysis is generalized to an array of coupled dots which is expected to exhibit rich many-body behavior.Comment: 14 pages, 11 pages and 1 table. Typos in text and Figs.4 and 6 correcte