El Cuerpo
Académico de Partículas Campos y Relatividad General invita
cordialmente a su próximo seminario
Search
for Dark Matter with Superheated Liquids in COUPP and PICO
Dr. Eric Vázquez Jáuregui
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Laboratory –
SNOLAB
Este
seminario se llevará a cabo en la
Sala de Conferencias 111B/302
Miércoles 22 de enero de 2014
12:00 hrs.
Resumen:
COUPP, the Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics,
makes use of bubble chambers to search for dark matter. The nucleation of
bubbles is induced by single nuclear recoils due to WIMP-nucleon elastic
scattering, neutron interactions or alpha decays. When the thermodynamic
parameters (pressure and temperature) are appropriately tuned, nucleations by electromagnetic radiation can be suppressed
at the level of 10−10. The COUPP bubble chambers consist of synthetic
fused silica jars filled with CF3I as the target material and ultra pure water
as a buffer. The system is enclosed in a stainless steel pressure vessel filled
with an hydraulic fluid, propylene glycol, and connected to a pressure control
unit.
Two bubble
chambers have been operated deep underground at SNOLAB. COUPP4 was installed in
the summer of 2010, acquiring data in two physics runs. The first physics runaccumulated 553 kg-days of livetime
with 4.048 kg of CF3I, and the second physics run accumulated 499 kg-days with
4.052 kg of CF3I. COUPP60 was installed during 2012 until mid 2013 and is
currently taking data with 36.8 kg of CF3I. The detector has collected 1378
kg-days of dark matter search data between 10 and 20 keV
threshold.
The COUPP and
PICASSO collaborations have merged into the PICO collaboration in order to
trigger a campaign of experiments using the superheated liquid technique. The
first common project is PICO-2L, a refurbished COUPP4 detector, using C3F8 as
target material, focusing on spin dependent coupling and low WIMP masses in the
spin independent sector. The experiment has been taking data since November 2013.
The main goal of the PICO collaboration is to build a one-tonne
scale detector, named PICO-250L, using CF3I or C3F8, and planning to start data
taking in 2016.
A summary of
the COUPP4 results, the latest results of COUPP60, as well as the status of PICO-2L
and PICO-250L are presented in this seminar.