DarkSide (dark matter experiment)

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is planning, building and operating a series of liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) that are employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The detectors are filled with liquid argon from underground sources in order to exclude the radioactive isotope , which makes up one in every 1015 (quadrillion) atoms in atmospheric argon. The Darkside-10 (DS-10) prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 (DS-50) experiment has been operating since 2013. Darkside-20k (DS-20k) with 20 tonnes (20,000 kg) of liquid argon is being planned as of 2019.

Darkside-10

The Darkside-10 prototype detector had 10 kg of liquid argon. It was built at Princeton University and operated there for seven months, after which it was transported to Gran Sasso National Laboratory in 2011. The detector operated in Gran Sasso 2011-2012.

Status

Darkside-50 has 46 kg argon target mass. A 3-year run is planned and ton-scale expansion has been proposed.

Initial results using a month of running were reported in 2014. Spin-independent limits were set using 1422 kg×days of exposure to atmospheric argon. A cross section limit of for a 100 Gev WIMP was found.

Members The following institutions' physics departments include members of DarkSide: Augustana College, USA Black Hills State University, USA Drexel University, USA Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA Fort Lewis College, USA Institute for Nuclear Research, Kyiv, Ukraine Princeton University, USA Temple University, USA University of Arkansas, USA University of Alberta, Canada University of California, Los Angeles, USA University of California, Davis, USA University of Chicago, USA University of Houston, USA University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA University of Hawaii, USA Virginia Tech, USA Williams College, USA University College London, GB University of Oxford, GB Royal Holloway, University of London, GB INFN – Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy INFN – Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy INFN – Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy INFN – Università degli Studi di Napoli, Italy INFN – Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italy INFN – Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy GSSI – Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy CERN – The European Organization for Nuclear Research, Switzerland/France Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland Belgorod State University, Russia Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia Novosibirsk State University, Russia Kurchatov Institute, Russia National Research Nuclear University, Moscow, Russia Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Gatchina, Russia

DarkSide (dark matter experiment)

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