Conveners
DM4: Backgrounds in Dark Matter Experiments I
- Shigetaka Moriyama (ICRR, The University of Tokyo)
Dr
Alvine Kamaha
(University at Albany, State University of New York)
9/9/19, 4:10 PM
Dark matter
Oral presentation in parallel session
The LZ collaboration has concluded one of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging assay and cleanliness programmes to date for an experiment of its type. This included assays for fixed contaminants through gamma-ray and mass- spectrometry, assays for mobile contaminants through radon emanation and assays for surface contamination through a variety of (radio-metric and optical) techniques. The...
Dr
Amy Cottle
(University of Oxford)
9/9/19, 4:30 PM
Dark matter
Oral presentation in parallel session
LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) will search for dark matter with a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber. Backgrounds that can affect the experiment’s sensitivity must be well understood. Material selection, xenon purification and passive shielding are critical in achieving a radiopure environment. Fiducialization and active vetoing will be employed to help discriminate background events. Simulations are...
Daniel Baxter
(University of Chicago)
9/9/19, 4:50 PM
Dark matter
Oral presentation in parallel session
The DAMIC-M detector will use fully-depleted silicon charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for low mass dark matter. The detector will combine the excellent understanding of CCD backgrounds from DAMIC at SNOLAB with ongoing developments in the single electron resolution of skipper amplifiers to provide unprecedented sensitivity to light dark matter particles. The DAMIC-M program takes...
Dr
Richard Saldanha
(Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
9/9/19, 5:10 PM
Dark matter
Oral presentation in parallel session
Long-lived radioactive isotopes produced by cosmogenic activation are a major source of background for rare event searches such as dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay. Understanding the production rates of these cosmogenic isotopes is extremely important for determining the total allowable surface residence time of detector materials during fabrication, storage, and transportation....
Dr
Vicente Pesudo
(CIEMAT)
9/9/19, 5:30 PM
Dark matter
Oral presentation in parallel session
The neutron production induced by ($\alpha$,n) reactions is important in various scenarios. One of the most relevant
ones is the direct search of WIMP-like dark matter in underground experiments, like DarkSide-20k, where the neutrons produced by the $\alpha$-decay from
radioactive contaminants in the detector materials can produce an irreducible background, limiting the
sensitivity of the...
Mr
Dylan Temples
(Northwestern University)
9/9/19, 5:50 PM
Dark matter
Oral presentation in parallel session
Dark matter searches using dual-phase xenon time projection chambers (LXe-TPC) rely on the discrimination between electronic recoils (background) and nuclear recoils (signal) based on the ratio of ionization electrons to scintillation photons produced by the interaction in the liquid xenon. This discrimination is calibrated at low energies using tritium $\beta$-decays. However, neutrino and...
