11 research outputs found
Snowmass 2021 Cross Frontier Report: Dark Matter Complementarity (Extended Version)
The fundamental nature of Dark Matter is a central theme of the Snowmass 2021
process, extending across all frontiers. In the last decade, advances in
detector technology, analysis techniques and theoretical modeling have enabled
a new generation of experiments and searches while broadening the types of
candidates we can pursue. Over the next decade, there is great potential for
discoveries that would transform our understanding of dark matter. In the
following, we outline a road map for discovery developed in collaboration among
the frontiers. A strong portfolio of experiments that delves deep, searches
wide, and harnesses the complementarity between techniques is key to tackling
this complicated problem, requiring expertise, results, and planning from all
Frontiers of the Snowmass 2021 process.Comment: v1 is first draft for community commen
Scintillation efficiency measurement of Na recoils in NaI(Tl) below the DAMA/LIBRA energy threshold
Measurement of Scintillation Efficiency for Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon
The scintillation light yield of liquid argon from nuclear recoils relative to electronic recoils has been measured as a function of recoil energy from 10 keVr up to 250 keVr at zero electric field. The scintillation efficiency, defined as the ratio of the nuclear recoil scintillation response to the electronic recoil response, is 0.25 ± 0.01 + 0.01 (correlated) above 20 keVr
Scintillating Bubble Chambers for Rare Event Searches
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers for the detection of sub-keV nuclear recoils. These detectors benefit from the electron recoil rejection inherent in moderately-superheated bubble chambers with the addition of energy reconstruction provided from the scintillation signal. The ability to measure low-energy nuclear recoils allows the search for GeV-scale dark matter and the measurement of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on argon from MeV-scale reactor antineutrinos. The first physics-scale detector, SBC-LAr10, is in the commissioning phase at Fermilab, where extensive engineering and calibration studies will be performed. In parallel, a functionally identical low-background version, SBC-SNOLAB, is being built for a dark matter search underground at SNOLAB. SBC-SNOLAB, with a 10 kg-yr exposure, will have sensitivity to a dark matter–nucleon cross section of 2×10−42 cm2 at 1 GeV/c2 dark matter mass, and future detectors could reach the boundary of the argon neutrino fog with a tonne-yr exposure. In addition, the deployment of an SBC detector at a nuclear reactor could enable neutrino physics investigations including measurements of the weak mixing angle and searches for sterile neutrinos, the neutrino magnetic moment, and the light Z’ gauge boson