Speaker
Description
DEAP-3600 is a single-phase liquid argon (LAr) direct-detection dark matter experiment, operating 2km underground at SNOLAB (Sudbury, Canada). The 3279kg of LAr are contained in a spherical acrylic vessel surrounded by 255 eight-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). Analysis of the data taken during the first year of operation resulted in the most sensitive limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section achieved using a LAr target for WIMPs with mass >30GeV [1902.04048]. As shown by Yaguna [1902.10256], these results also demonstrate the importance of complementarity between target nuclei.
This talk gives an overview of the detector and the analysis. A focus is put on the background model and the power of the pulse-shape discrimination technique, which is used to reject recorded events originating from beta decays of naturally present Ar39. In addition, PMT afterpulse removal using a Bayesian photoelectron-counting technique is discussed as well as two position reconstruction algorithms based on the charge and photon detection time distributions observed in each PMT.
