PICASSO (dark matter)

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The PICASSO (Project in CAnada to Search for Supersymmetric Objects) experiment is a direct dark matter search experiment that is located at SNOLAB in Canada. It is an international collaboration with members from the Université de Montréal, Queen's University, Indiana University South Bend and Czech Technical University in Prague, University of Alberta, Laurentian University and BTI, Chalk River, Ontario. It uses bubble detectors with Freon as the active mass. PICASSO is predominantly sensitive to spin-dependent interactions of the WIMP with the fluorine atoms in the Freon.

A bubble detector is a radiation sensitive device that uses small droplets of superheated liquid that are suspended in a gel matrix. It uses the principle of a bubble chamber but since only the small droplets can undergo a phase transition at a time the detector can stay active for much longer periods than a classic bubble chamber. When enough energy is deposited in a droplet by ionizing radiation the superheated doplet undergoes a phase transition and becomes a gas bubble. The PICASSO detectors contain Freon droplets with an average diameter of 80µm. The bubble development in the detector is accompanied by an acoustic shock wave that is picked up by piezo-electric sensors. The main advantage of the bubble detector technique is that the detector is almost insensitive to background radiation. The detector sensitivity can be adjusted by changing the temperature of the droplets. Freon-loaded detectors are typically operated at temperatures between 15°C and 55°C.

The validity of the bubble detector concept has been shown in several publications [[1]]. There is another similar experiment using this technique in Europe called SIMPLE (dark matter).