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The XENON dark matter research project, operated at the Italian Gran Sasso National Laboratory, is a deep underground detector facility featuring increasingly ambitious experiments aiming to detect hypothetical dark matter particles. The experiments aim to detect particles in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by looking for rare nuclear recoil interactions in a liquid xenon target chamber. The current detector consists of a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC).
Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is the largest underground research center in the world. Situated below Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, it is well known for particle physics research by the INFN. In addition to a surface portion of the laboratory, there are extensive underground facilities beneath the mountain. The nearest towns are L'Aquila and Teramo. The facility is located about 120 km from Rome.
The ArDM Experiment was a particle physics experiment based on a liquid argon detector, aiming at measuring signals from WIMPs, which may constitute the Dark Matter in the universe. Elastic scattering of WIMPs from argon nuclei is measurable by observing free electrons from ionization and photons from scintillation, which are produced by the recoiling nucleus interacting with neighbouring atoms. The ionization and scintillation signals can be measured with dedicated readout techniques, which constituted a fundamental part of the detector.
Astroparticle physics, also called particle astrophysics, is a branch of particle physics that studies elementary particles of astrophysical origin and their relation to astrophysics and cosmology. It is a relatively new field of research emerging at the intersection of particle physics, astronomy, astrophysics, detector physics, relativity, solid state physics, and cosmology. Partly motivated by the discovery of neutrino oscillation, the field has undergone rapid development, both theoretically and experimentally, since the early 2000s.
DEAP is a direct dark matter search experiment which uses liquid argon as a target material. DEAP utilizes background discrimination based on the characteristic scintillation pulse-shape of argon. A first-generation detector (DEAP-1) with a 7 kg target mass was operated at Queen's University to test the performance of pulse-shape discrimination at low recoil energies in liquid argon. DEAP-1 was then moved to SNOLAB, 2 km below Earth's surface, in October 2007 and collected data into 2011.
The Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX) aimed to directly detect weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter interactions with ordinary matter on Earth. Despite the wealth of (gravitational) evidence supporting the existence of non-baryonic dark matter in the Universe, dark matter particles in our galaxy have never been directly detected in an experiment. LUX utilized a 370 kg liquid xenon detection mass in a time-projection chamber (TPC) to identify individual particle interactions, searching for faint dark matter interactions with unprecedented sensitivity.
The Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers (CRESST) is a collaboration of European experimental particle physics groups involved in the construction of cryogenic detectors for direct dark matter searches. The participating institutes are the Max Planck Institute for Physics (Munich), Technical University of Munich, University of Tübingen (Germany), University of Oxford, the Comenius University Bratislava (Slovakia) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare.
The DAMA/LIBRA experiment is a particle detector experiment designed to detect dark matter using the direct detection approach, by using a matrix of NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors to detect dark matter particles in the galactic halo. The experiment aims to find an annual modulation of the number of detection events, caused by the variation of the velocity of the detector relative to the dark matter halo as the Earth orbits the Sun. It is located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.
The WIMP Argon Programme (WARP) is an experiment at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, for the research of cold dark matter. It aims to detect nuclear recoils in liquid argon induced by weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) through scintillation light; the apparatus can also detect ionization so to exclude interactions of photons and electrons. The experiment is a recognized CERN experiment (RE15).
The ZEPLIN-III dark matter experiment attempted to detect galactic WIMPs using a 12 kg liquid xenon target. It operated from 2006 to 2011 at the Boulby Underground Laboratory in Loftus, North Yorkshire. This was the last in a series of xenon-based experiments in the ZEPLIN programme pursued originally by the UK Dark Matter Collaboration (UKDMC). The ZEPLIN-III project was led by Imperial College London and also included the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Edinburgh in the UK, as well as LIP-Coimbra in Portugal and ITEP-Moscow in Russia. It ruled out cross-sections for elastic scattering of WIMPs off nucleons above 3.9 × 10−8 pb from the two science runs conducted at Boulby.
ICARUS is a physics experiment aimed at studying neutrinos. It was located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) where it started operations in 2010. After completion of its operations there, it was refurbished at CERN for re-use at Fermilab, in the same neutrino beam as the MiniBooNE, MicroBooNE and Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) experiments. The ICARUS detector was then taken apart for transport and reassembled at Fermilab, where data collection is expected to begin in fall 2021.
The Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector, or PandaX, is a dark matter detection experiment at China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, China. The experiment occupies the deepest underground laboratory in the world, and is among the largest of its kind.
The Cryogenic Low-Energy Astrophysics with Noble liquids (CLEAN) experiment by the DEAP/CLEAN collaboration is searching for dark matter using noble gases at the SNOLAB underground facility. CLEAN has studied neon and argon in the MicroCLEAN prototype, and running the MiniCLEAN detector to test a multi-ton design.
Elena Aprile is an Italian-American experimental particle physicist. She has been a professor of physics at Columbia University since 1986. She is the founder and spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter Experiment. Aprile is well known for her work with noble liquid detectors and for her contributions to particle astrophysics in the search for dark matter.
The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment is a next-generation dark matter direct detection experiment hoping to observe weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) scatters on nuclei. It was formed in 2012 by combining the LUX and ZEPLIN groups. It is currently a collaboration of 30 institutes in the US, UK, Portugal and South Korea. The experiment is located at about 1,500 meteres under the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota, and is managed by the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
The Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) is a laboratory 1 km deep in the Stawell Gold Mine, located in Stawell, Shire of Northern Grampians, Victoria, Australia. Together with the planned Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site (ANDES) at the Agua Negra Pass, it is one of just two underground particle physics laboratories in the Southern Hemisphere and shall conduct research into dark matter.
Ettore Fiorini was an Italian experimental particle physicist. He studied the physics of the weak interaction and was a pioneer in the field of double beta decay. He served as a professor of nuclear and subnuclear physics at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
Luisa Cifarelli FInstP is a Professor of Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Bologna. She is the Director of the La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento.
Direct detection of dark matter is the science of attempting to directly measure dark matter collisions in Earth-based experiments. Modern astrophysical measurements, such as from the Cosmic Microwave Background, strongly indicate that 85% of the matter content of the universe is unaccounted for. Although the existence of dark matter is widely believed, what form it takes or its precise properties has never been determined. There are three main avenues of research to detect dark matter: attempts to make dark matter in accelerators, indirect detection of dark matter annihilation, and direct detection of dark matter in terrestrial labs. The founding principle of direct dark matter detection is that since dark matter is known to exist in the local universe, as the Earth, Solar System, and the Milky Way Galaxy carve out a path through the universe they must intercept dark matter, regardless of what form it takes.
The Cryogenic Observatory for SIgnatures seen in Next-generation Underground Searches (COSINUS) is a scientific collaboration aimed at developing cryogenic detectors for the direct detection of dark matter, particularly in relation to results observed by other experiments like DAMA/LIBRA. The goal of COSINUS is to confirm or refute these results by using different detection techniques while maintaining high sensitivity to dark matter interactions.
References
- ↑ Lofholm, Nancy (5 October 2012). "Colorado argon will be at the heart of dark matter experiment". Denver Post.
- ↑ "Low-background Argon from underground reservoir". DarkSide collaboration. Archived from the original on 2016-07-23.
- ↑ "The DarkSide of Gran Sasso". CERN Courier. 2012-05-31. Retrieved 2021-06-19.
- 1 2 Agnes, P.; et al. (2015). "First Results from the DarkSide-50 Dark Matter Experiment at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso". Physics Letters B. 743 (456): 456–466. arXiv: 1410.0653 . Bibcode:2015PhLB..743..456A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2015.03.012. S2CID 119112092.
