A Xenon Bubble Chamber for Direct Dark Matter Detection

Abstract

With the lack of discovery of WIMPs at high mass, and hints of signals at low masses, it is becoming increasingly important for direct dark matter detectors to set low thresholds. With a hypothetically completely tuneable threshold based on pressure and temperature, a bubble chamber could be the ideal detector to search for sub-GeV WIMPs and other light exotica. However, this technology has its own drawbacks, such as an unknown recoil energy on an event-by-event basis. By combining this technology with that of the xenon time-projection chamber, however, the strengths of both of these approaches are merged, leading to a bubble chamber with energy reconstruction combined with excellent discrimination of nuclear versus electron recoils, critical for rejecting the most common radiogenic and cosmogenic backgrounds. A sketch of how such a device could be constructed will be presented

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