Conveners
M2-3 Particles deep underground (PPD) | Particules profondément sous terre (PPD)
- Wolfgang Rau (Queen's University)
Answering many of the outstanding questions in astroparticle and subatomic physics today requires the ultra-quiet environment provided by deep underground research facilities. SNOLAB is Canada's deep underground facility, at a depth of 2 km in Vale’s Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario. In this environment, cosmic radiation induced backgrounds are minimized to levels allowing the operation of...
Neutrino physics continues to be a rich and vibrant field. SNO+, situated as it is in the Vale Creighton Mine at 6800 m water equivalent depth, promises to address a number of topics within the subject. To understand the measurements taken by the SNO+ detector, a similarly multifaceted approach is required for its calibration. The different techniques used in the SNO+ calibration will be...
Only one supernova neutrino burst has ever been detected, and the detection of additional neutrinos from galactic core-collapse supernovae are expected to provide insight on the supernova explosion mechanism. One candidate for detecting supernova neutrinos is SNO+, a multipurpose ultra-low background particle detector. Within SNO+, a galactic supernova neutrino burst is expected to generate an...
The flux of thermal neutrons, fast neutrons, and gamma photons, arising due to radioactivity in the materials surrounding the detector, constitute the principle component of the radiation environment for the underground experiments at SNOLAB. The flux of fast neutrons comprising ($\alpha$, n) and spontaneous fission constitutes a significant background and the SNO collaboration estimated...
DEAP-3600 is a liquid argon (LAr) based spin-independent direct dark matter search experiment. It is designed to detect nuclear recoils induced by the elastic scattering of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) on argon nuclei. DEAP-3600 recently reported its second physics result that included the best reported upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross section on a LAr...
There is strong astrophysical and cosmological evidence for a new kind of matter known as dark matter, which does not interact via the electromagnetic or strong forces. The SuperCDMS experiment searches for dark matter particle candidates using cryogenic germanium and silicon detectors. The next generation of SuperCDMS is scheduled to start operating at SNOLAB in 2020. Before this facility is...
DEAP-3600 (Dark Matter Experiment using Pulse Shape Discrimination) is a direct detection dark matter detector located at SNOLAB in Lively, Ontario. DEAP uses ~3.3 tonnes of liquid argon as its target volume that is housed in a acrylic sphere. In this discussion, I will highlight the technique used to perform a low mass WIMP search with DEAP followed by the expected sensitivity. I will include...