Speaker
Description
The PICO experiment is a dark matter direct-detection experiment
at SNOLAB, which has set world-leading limits on the spin-dependent
couplings of WIMPs to nucleii in the mass range of approximately 10-
100 GeV. There have been several iterations of the PICO detector;
each is a bubble chamber with a super-heated fluid as the active ma-
terial. The current version of the PICO detector is PICO-40l, which
has been substantially redesigned since the previous verison, PICO-
60. The installation of PICO-40l underground will be completed in
early 2019, with commissioning and calibration data-taking occurring
in the spring and summer.
The primary purpose of PICO-40l is to demonstrate the feasibility
of the new design, which will be implemented at ton scale by the next
detector, PICO-500. The commissioning results will be presented,
along with any implications for the design of PICO-500. The schedule
for data-taking will be presented as well, and the expected dark matter
limits to be obtained from this run.
