Speaker
Description
The CYGNO project aims to study rare events, as of low-mass (few GeV) Dark Matter (DM) or solar neutrino, exploiting the optical readout approach of the scintillation light produced in the ionisation in a multiple Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) structure in large volume Time Projection Chamber (TPCs).
The volume is filled with an He:CF$_4$ gas mixture at atmospheric pressure. The 3D topology, and therefore direction of the recoils, is reconstructed thanks to the combined use of high-granularity, high sensitivity sCMOS cameras, which perform a precise tracking of the projection of the recoils on the GEM plane, and of fast light in order to obtain the coordinate perpendicular to the camera plane.
To conclude the R&D phase, the 50 L prototype, called Long Imaging ModulE (LIME), was moved underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in order to study the performance of the CYGNO experimental approach in a low background environment and to assess the contributions to the background from different sources, also checking with Monte Carlo simulations.
Stability studies and the effects of environmental condition on the light yield will be presented, focusing on the effect of humidity on the detector response and stability amount and rate of self-sustaining micro-discarges.
This is a crucial step towards the development of a large demonstrator.
