Towards the DarkSide-20k experiment

Seminario congiunto DIFI-INFN

  • Zoom
  • Seminar

Speakers

Bianca Bottino
Princeton University and INFN-Genova

Details

The DarkSide-20k experiment, located at the Gran Sasso (LNGS) underground laboratory, aims to detect dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) using a dual phase liquid argon Time Projection Chamber (TPC). It is expected to attain a WIMP-nucleon cross section of 10−48 cm2 for a WIMP mass of 1 TeV/c2, with all sources of instrumental background reduced to <0.1 events over a 200 t yr exposure.
In my talk I will describe the DarkSide-20k detector that will be based on a more than 20 tonne fiducial mass TPC filled with ultra pure underground argon. In particular I will focus on the R&D work that we are doing here in Genova for the neutron veto detector. The veto is composed of two instrumented atmospheric argon (AAr) volumes that sandwich a passive shell of gadolinium-loaded PMMA (Poly(methyl methacrylate)). To obtain thick Gd-loaded PMMA sheets we are working to make a stable colloidal dispersion of gadolinium nano-grains in the liquid MMA, performing a functionalization of the particles to minimize the clusterization and the deposition during the polymerization process.

https://cern.zoom.us/j/5021685620?pwd=eURYcnFOeFBkQmprUXIrT1N0VnM1dz09