Speaker
Alan Robinson
(University of Chicago)
Description
Bubble chambers are a compelling technology to use in the search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter. They can be operated in a regime that is sensitive to the nuclear recoils produced by dark matter interactions, but insensitive to the typically-dominant background of electron recoils. Using fluorinated targets, they provide data that is complementarity to other searches for dark matter and the ability to change target nuclei in the same experiment to confirm the properties of dark matter. The PICASSO and COUPP collaborations have recently merged into PICO with the goal of constructing PICO-250L, a ton scale bubble chamber. This detector will have world leading sensitivity to spin-dependent WIMP interactions nearly four orders of magnitude better than existing limits. The challenges and considerations facing the development and construction of PICO-250L will be discussed. An overview of our efforts to face these challenges with ongoing calibrations and the currently operating
COUPP-60 and PICO-2L dark matter search bubble chambers will be presented.
Primary author
Alan Robinson
(University of Chicago)
