3–10 Aug 2016
Chicago IL USA
US/Central timezone
There is a live webcast for this event.

Status of R&D of the ANKOK project: Low mass WIMP search using double phase argon detector (12' + 3')

5 Aug 2016, 17:30
15m
Chicago 8

Chicago 8

Oral Presentation Detector: R&D and Performance Detector: R&D and Performance

Speaker

Masashi Tanaka (Waseda University)

Description

Liquid argon is known as an excellent target material for WIMP dark matter direct search experiment. Use of its ionization and scintillation signals, and scintillation pulse shape provides strong discrimination between the electron and nuclear recoil events. Relatively small atomic mass (A=40) gives higher nuclear recoil energy for WIMP-Ar nuclear scattering, thus it potentially has higher sensitivity for low mass WIMP (~10 GeV/c2). On the other hand, the 128 nm VUV scintillation light of argon is relatively hard to detect with nominal photo sensors, and use of wavelength shifter lowers the light detection efficiency and likewise the spatial resolution of the reconstructed event. At present, there are no liquid argon detectors which prove their sensitivities for the low mass WIMP. The ANKOK project is a new dark matter search experiment in Japan using the double phase liquid argon detector which is specialized for the low mass WIMP detection. We are currently proceeding R&D efforts to establish its physics sensitivity, such as understanding of the liquid argon scintillation and ionization process for very low energy deposition (~20 keV) and development of the new photo-sensor which has direct sensitivity for the 128 nm VUV light. In the next few years, we are targeting to construct a detector with fiducial mass of several tens of kg, and to collect the underground physics data to search for low mass WIMP. In this presentation, we will report R&D status and future plan of the ANKOK project.

Primary author

Masashi Tanaka (Waseda University)

Co-authors

Kohei Yorita (Waseda University (JP)) Tatsuki Washimi (Waseda University)

Presentation materials