Experimental Particle and Astro-Particle Physics Seminar

Monday 9 May 2022, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Zurich

Stefanos Leontsinis (University of Zurich (CH))

Abstract: The NEWS-G collaboration is searching for low mass dark matter using spherical proportional counters. Access to the mass range from 50 MeV to 10 GeV is enabled by the combination of single electron threshold, light gaseous targets (H, He, Ne), and highly radio-pure detector construction. Initial NEWS-G results obtained with SEDINE, a 60 cm in diameter spherical proportional counter operating at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (France), excluded for the first time WIMP-like dark matter down to 0.5 GeV masses. The latest advances in SPC instrumentation and the construction of a new, 140 cm in diameter, spherical proportional counter constructed using 4N copper with a 500 um underground electroplated copper inner layer will be presented, along with its installation and commissioning at SNOLAB (Canada), where it is scheduled to collect data later this year. Future prospects and applications of spherical proportional counters will be discussed, and the potential to achieve sensitivity reaching the neutrino floor in low mass Dark Matter searches with a next-generation detector will also be summarised.

Zoom room link

Meeting ID: 912 1383 7955
Passcode: 069577
 

14:00 → 15:00 Searching for light Dark Matter with Spherical Proportional Counters

Speaker: Konstantinos Nikolopoulos (University of Birmingham (GB))

20220509_kn_Zurich.pdf