DarkSide

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is building a series of noble liquid time projection chambers (TPCs) that are designed to be employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The technique is based on liquid argon depleted in the radioactive isotope 39Ar, which is common in atmospheric argon. The Darkside-10 prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 experiment has been operating since 2013.

Status

Darkside-50 is operating with 46 kg of argon target mass. A 3 year run is planned and ton-scale expansion has been proposed.

Initial results using a month of running were reported in 2014.[1] Spin-independent limits were set using 1422 kg×days of exposure to atmospheric argon. A cross section limit of 6.1 × 10−44 cm2 for a 100 Gev WIMP was found.

Members

The following institutions' physics departments include members of DarkSide:

See also

References

Publications

External links