Speaker
Daniel Baxter
(Northwestern University)
Description
The PICO Collaboration continues to produce the most stringent direct detection limits on spin-dependent WIMP-proton dark matter interactions. This success is due to the unparalleled capability of bubble chamber detectors to reject radioactive backgrounds and their unique ability to use target nuclei unavailable to other technologies. Despite this success, past runs with PICO detectors have been consistently limited by backgrounds of unknown origin. The primary component of this background is now identified as originating from particulate contamination and was eliminated in the recent science results from the PICO-2L chamber. I will present a summary of these efforts, including calibration studies on the precise nature of this particulate-induced background and progress on the next science run of our primary physics device, PICO-60. Our developing knowledge of these backgrounds enables us not only to mitigate them in PICO-60, which promises to probe spin-dependent dark matter interactions by up to two orders of magnitude beyond PICO’s current leading limits, but also potentially to distinguish them on an event-by-event basis from a dark matter signal.
Primary author
Daniel Baxter
(Northwestern University)
Co-authors
Alan Robinson
(University of Chicago)
Alexandre Leblanc
(Laurentian University)
Andrew Sonnenschein
(Fermilab)
Arthur Plante
Carsten Krauss
(University of Alberta)
Chanpreet Amole
(Queen's University)
Christopher Jackson
(Université de Montréal)
Ed Behnke
(Indiana University South Bend)
Eric Dahl
(Northwestern University)
Eric Vazquez-Jauregui
(UNAM)
Frederic Girard
(Laurentian University)
Guillaume Giroux
(Queen's University)
Hugh Lippincott
(FNAL)
Ian Lawson
(SNOLAB)
Ilan Levine
(Indiana University South Bend)
Ivan Felis
(Universidad Politécnica de Valencia)
Ivan Stekl
(Czech Technical University in Prague)
Jean-Pierre Martin
(Unknown)
Jeter Hall
(Fermilab)
Jianjie Zhang
(Northwestern University)
Juan Collar Colmenero
Ken Clark
(University of Toronto)
Mala Das
(Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics)
Manuel Bou Cabo
(Upv)
Mark Keener Ruschman
(Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (Fermilab)-Unknown-Unknown)
Mathieu Laurin
(Université de Montréal)
Matthieu Lafrenière
Miaotianzi Jin
(Northwestern University)
Miguel Ardid
(UPV)
Mike Crisler
(FNAL)
Olivia Scallon
(Universite de Montreal)
Orin Harris
(Indiana University South Bend)
Peter Cooper
(Fermilab)
Pitam Mitra
(University of Alberta)
Robert Filgas
(Czech Technical University in Prague)
Ruslan Podviyanuk
(L)
Russell Neilson
(Drexel University)
Scott Fallows
(University of Alberta)
Steve Brice
(Fermilab)
Tony Noble
(Queen's University)
Ubi Wichoski
(Laurentian University)
Viktor Zacek
(Université de Montreal)
david asner
(Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
