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Status of the SBC Collaboration's Bubble Chambers for Dark Matter Experiments

ORAL

Abstract

The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is currently constructing a pair of 10 liter bubble chambers for argon-based low threshold nuclear recoil detection experiments. The first of this pair will be operated at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, taking calibration data sets to confirm the expected ability to reach a 100 eV nuclear recoil detection threshold (for bubble nucleation) and test the detector's bubble nucleation and scintillation responses to gamma rays, neutrons, and alphas over a range of thresholds. The second detector will be built to the cleanliness and radiopurity standards of a WIMP dark matter search and will be deployed deep underground at SNOLAB, expecting to initially take a 10 kg-yr exposure. With the 100 eV threshold and 10 kg-yr exposure, the SBC-SNOLAB chamber will be competitive with other planned low-threshold dark matter searches for WIMP-like dark matter with mass between ~1-10 GeV. We present the current status and outlook for these bubble chambers.

Presenters

  • Matthew J Bressler

    Drexel University

Authors

  • Matthew J Bressler

    Drexel University