Speaker
Dr
Ran Budnik
(Columbia university)
Description
The future prospect of dark matter detection lies in larger target masses and volumes, of which the next step is a ton scale. Liquefied noble gas detectors, such as Argon and Xenon, are relatively simple to scale up. However, the challenge of purifying the medium and drifting charges over lengths of about three times longer than previously done (about 1m), has never been overcome.
A test setup was constructed and tested at Columbia University, consisting of a liquid
xenon chamber, a cryocooler, a gas recirculation system with pump and SAES getter, and a heat exchanger module. The setup is used to test and demonstrate our ability to drift charges over 1 meter with minimal losses. The main challenges include high voltage techniques, high rate gas flow and purifying of the gas. The detector, the cooling tower and the heat exchanger are mounted in three separate thermal vacuum vessels to reduce heat losses to the ambient air. For the cryocooler, an Iwatani PC-150 PTR with a 6.5 KW water cooled He compressor delivers 200 W of cooling power at 165K. This PTR is the same as used on XENON100. The liquid is taken from the detector through the heat exchanger, where the latent heat is transferred to the returning xenon gas stream with a very high efficiency, measured to be above 96 percent. For the XENON1T Demonstrator, the optimized size of heat exchanger, pipes and getter should allow a recirculation rate in excess of 100 slpm.
Author
Dr
Ran Budnik
(Columbia university)
Co-author
Prof.
Elena Aprile
(Columbia university)
