Status of ArDM-1t: First observations from operation with a full ton-scale liquid argon target
ArDM Collaboration, J. Calvo, C. Cantini, M. Daniel, U. Degunda, S. Di Luise, L. Epprecht, A. Gendotti, S. Horikawa, L. Knecht, B. Montes, W. Mu, M. Munoz, S. M… 展开作者
ArDM Collaboration, J. Calvo, C. Cantini, M. Daniel, U. Degunda, S. Di Luise, L. Epprecht, A. Gendotti, S. Horikawa, L. Knecht, B. Montes, W. Mu, M. Munoz, S. Murphy, G. Natterer, K. Nguyen, K. Nikolics, L. Periale, C. Regenfus, L. Romero, A. Rubbia, R. Santorelli, F. Sergiampietri, D. Sgalaberna, T. Viant, S. Wu
ArDM-1t is the first operating ton-scale liquid argon detector for direct search of Dark Matter particles. Developed at CERN as Recognized Experiment RE18, the experiment has been approved in 2010 to be installed in the Spanish underground site LSC (Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc). Under the label of LSC EXP-08-2010 the ArDM detector underwent an intensive period of technical completion and safety approval until the recent filling of the target vessel with almost 2 ton of liquid argon. This report describes the experimental achievements during commissioning of ArDM and the transition into a stage of first physics data taking in single phase operational mode. We present preliminary observations from this run. A first indication for the background discrimination power of LAr detectors at the ton-scale is shown. We present an outlook for completing the detector with the electric drift field and upgrade of the scintillation light readout system with novel detector modules based on SiPMs in order to improve the light yield.
The Argon Dark Matter (ArDM) experiment consists of a liquid argon (LAr) time projection chamber (TPC) sensitive to nuclear recoils resulting from scattering of hypothetical Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) on argon targets. With an active target of 850 kg, ArDM represents an important milestone in the quest for Dark Matter with LAr. We present the experimental apparatus currently installed underground at the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc (LSC), Spain. We show first data recorded during a single-phase commissioning run in 2015 (ArDM Run I), which overall confirm the good and …
We report on a measurement of the attenuation length for the scintillation light in the tonne size liquid argon target of the ArDM dark matter experiment. The data was recorded in the first underground operation of the experiment in single-phase operational mode. The results were achieved by comparing the light yield spectra from 39-Ar and 83m-Kr to a description of the ArDM setup with a model of full light ray tracing. A relatively low value close to 0.5 m was found for the attenuation length of the liquid argon bulk to its own scintillation light. We interpret this result as a presence of op…
The ArDM experiment completed a single-phase commissioning run in 2015 with an active liquid argon target of nearly one tonne in mass. The analysis of the data and comparison to simulations allowed for a test of the crucial detector properties and confirmed the low background performance of the setup. The statistical rejection power for electron recoil events using the pulse shape discrimination method was estimated using data from a Cf-252 neutron calibration source. Electron and nuclear recoil band profiles were found to be well described by Gaussian distributions. Employing such a model we …
Measuring the argon purity is critical for all Ar-based rare event research experiments. Mass spectrometry is typically used to assess the uranium and thorium contamination in samples of the materials used to build low-background detectors; however, this technique has the potential to provide other valuable information that is currently not exploited. We have shown that, by ICP-MS, it is possible to identify and quantify common chemical contaminants in argon. Preliminary tests were done with the gas extracted from the experiments MicroBooNE at FNAL and ArDM at LSC. In the former case, we evide…
Next generation multi-ton scale noble liquid experiments have the unique opportunity to discover dark matter particles at the TeV scale, reaching the sensitivity of 10^-48 cm2 in the WIMP nucleon scattering cross-section. A prerequisite will be the reduction of radiogenic background sources to negligible levels. This is only possible if ultra pure high efficiency photosensors are available for the scintillation light readout. Current experiments (e.g. Xenon, LUX, Darkside, ArDM) use cryogenic PMTs as photosensors. An attractive alternative is represented by silicon photomultiplier arrays (SiPM…
Large liquid argon detectors offer one of the best avenues for the detection of galactic weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) via their scattering on atomic nuclei. The liquid argon target allows exquisite discrimination between nuclear and electron recoil signals via pulse-shape discrimination of the scintillation signals. Atmospheric argon (AAr), however, has a naturally occurring radioactive isotope, $^{39}$Ar, a $β$ emitter of cosmogenic origin. For large detectors, the atmospheric $^{39}$Ar activity poses pile-up concerns. The use of argon extracted from underground wells, deprive…
One of the most powerful techniques for direct detection of dark matter via elastic scattering of galactic WIMPs is the use of liquid argon time projection chambers. Atmospheric argon (AAr) has a naturally occurring radioactive isotope, \ar{}, of cosmogenic origin. The use of argon extracted from underground wells, deprived of \ar{}, is key to the physics potential of these experiments. The DarkSide-20k (DS-20k) dark matter search experiment will operate with 50 tonnes of radio-pure underground argon (UAr), extracted from the Urania plant in Cortez (USA) and purified in the Aria distillation p…
DarkSide-50 is the first physics detector of the DarkSide dark matter search program. The detector features a dual-phase underground-argon Time Projection Chamber (TPC) of 50 kg active mass surrounded by an organic liquid-scintillator neutron veto (30 tons) and a water-Cherenkov muon detector (1000 tons). The TPC is currently fully shielded and operating underground at Gran Sasso National Laboratory. A first run of 1422 kg-day exposure with atmospheric argon represents the most sensitive dark matter search using a liquid argon target. The TPC is now filled with underground argon, greatly reduc…
Given their small mobility coefficient in liquid argon with respect to the electrons, the ions spend a considerably longer time in the active volume. We studied the effects of the positive ion current in a liquid argon time projection chamber, in the context of massive argon experiments for neutrino physics. The constant recombination between free ions and electrons produces a quenching of the charge signal and a constant emission of photons, uncorrelated in time and space to the physical interactions. The predictions evidence some potential concerns for multi-ton argon detectors, particularly…
A 10 kilo-tonne dual-phase liquid argon TPC is one of the detector options considered for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). The detector technology relies on amplification of the ionisation charge in ultra-pure argon vapour and oers several advantages compared to the traditional single-phase liquid argon TPCs. A 4.2 tonne dual-phase liquid argon TPC prototype, the largest of its kind, with an active volume of 3x1x1 $m^3$ has been constructed and operated at CERN. In this paper we describe in detail the experimental setup and detector components as well as report on the operation…
The 35-ton prototype for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment far detector was a single-phase liquid argon time projection chamber with an integrated photon detector system, all situated inside a membrane cryostat. The detector took cosmic-ray data for six weeks during the period of February 1, 2016 to March 12, 2016. The performance of the photon detection system was checked with these data. An installed photon detector was demonstrated to measure the arrival times of cosmic-ray muons with a resolution better than 32 ns, limited by the timing of the trigger system. A measurement of the ti…
DarkSide (DS) at Gran Sasso underground laboratory is a direct dark matter search program based on TPCs with liquid argon from underground sources. The DS-50 TPC, with 50 kg of liquid argon is installed inside active neutron and muon detectors. DS-50 has been taking data since Nov 2013, collecting more than 10^7 events with atmospheric argon. This data represents an exposure to the largest background, beta decays of 39Ar, comparable to the full 3 y run of DS-50 with underground argon. When analysed with a threshold that would give a sensitivity in the full run of about 10^-45 cm2 at a WIMP mas…
The use of xenon-doped liquid argon is a promising alternative for large pure liquid-argon TPCs. Not only xenon-doped liquid argon enhances the light production, mitigating the possible suppression due to impurities, but also it increases the wavelength of the scintillation light, enlarging the effective Rayleigh scattering length and improving the detection uniformity. ProtoDUNE Dual-Phase is a 300-ton active volume LAr TPC, a prototype for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a dual-site experiment for long-baseline neutrino oscillation studies, neutrino astrophysics and nucleon …
We report the results of the analyses of the cosmic ray data collected with a 4 tonne (3$\times$1$\times$1~m$^3$) active mass (volume) Liquid Argon Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) operated in a dual-phase mode. We present a detailed study of the TPC's response, its main detector parameters and performance. The results are important for the understanding and further developments of the dual-phase technology, thanks to the verification of key aspects, such as the extraction of electrons from liquid to gas and their amplification through the entire one square metre readout plain, gain stability, pu…
The Fermilab Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program aims to observe and reconstruct thousands of neutrino-argon interactions with its three detectors (SBND, MicroBooNE and ICARUS-T600), using their hundred of tonnes Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers to perform a rich physics analysis program, in particular focused in the search for sterile neutrinos. Given the relatively shallow depth of the detectors, the continuos flux of cosmic ray particles which crossing their volumes introduces a constant background which can be falsely identified as part of the event of interest. Here we present the …
Liquid argon time projection chamber technology is an attractive choice for large neutrino detectors, as it provides a high-resolution active target and it is expected to be scalable to very large masses. Consequently, it has been chosen as the technology for the first module of the DUNE far detector. However, the fiducial mass required for "far detectors" of the next generation of neutrino oscillation experiments far exceeds what has been demonstrated so far. Scaling to this larger mass, as well as the requirement for underground construction places a number of additional constraints on the d…
The DEAP-3600 detector searches for the scintillation signal from dark matter particles scattering on a 3.3 tonne liquid argon target. The largest background comes from $^{39}$Ar beta decays and is suppressed using pulseshape discrimination (PSD). We use two types of PSD algorithm: the prompt-fraction, which considers the fraction of the scintillation signal in a narrow and a wide time window around the event peak, and the log-likelihood-ratio, which compares the observed photon arrival times to a signal and a background model. We furthermore use two algorithms to determine the number of photo…
DEAP-3600 is a single-phase liquid argon dark matter detector being operated 2 km underground at SNOLAB, Sudbury, Canada. The detector consists of 3.3 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid argon in a spherical acrylic cryostat instrumented with 255 photomultiplier tubes. Natural radioactive contamination in the acrylic vessel or TPB wavelength shifter can alpha-decay. Reconstruction of the position of the interactions taking place in the detector uses information about the number of photoelectrons detected in each PMT and when they were detected. Including this information in our suite of cuts allows us…
The MiniCLEAN dark matter experiment will exploit a single-phase liquid-argon detector instrumented with 92 photomultiplier tubes placed in the cryogen temperature with 4-$π$ coverage of a 500 kg (150 kg) target (fiducial) mass. The detector design strategy emphasizes scalability to target masses of order 10 tons or more. The detector is designed also for a liquid neon target that allows for an independent verification of signal and background and a test of the expected dependence of the WIMP-nucleus interaction rate. For MiniCLEAN, PMT stability and calibration are essential. The \textit{In-s…
The Cryogenic Apparatus for Precision Tests of Argon Interactions with Neutrinos (CAPTAIN) program is designed to make measurements of scientific importance to long-baseline neutrino physics and physics topics that will be explored by large underground detectors. The experiment employs two liquid Argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs), a primary detector with a mass of approximately 10 ton that will be deployed at different facilities for physics measurements and a two ton prototype detector for configuration testing. The physics programs for CAPTAIN include measuring neutron interactions at…
Precision measurements of solar neutrinos emitted by specific nuclear reaction chains in the Sun are of great interest for developing an improved understanding of star formation and evolution. Given the expected neutrino fluxes and known detection reactions, such measurements require detectors capable of collecting neutrino-electron scattering data in exposures on the order of 1 ktonne yr, with good energy resolution and extremely low background. Two-phase liquid argon time projection chambers (LAr TPCs) are under development for direct Dark Matter WIMP searches, which possess very large sensi…
The Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is a 112 ton active mass liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) that will begin operations in the Booster Neutrino Beamline at Fermilab in 2020. Its main physics goals include high-statistics measurements of neutrino-argon interaction cross-sections and searches for sterile neutrino oscillations as part of three LArTPCs that make up the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program at Fermilab. In addition, SBND serves as an R\&D platform for future LArTPC detectors such as those employed by the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). One of the tech…
The DEAP-3600 experiment uses 3.6 tons of liquid argon for a sensitive dark matter search, with a sensitivity to the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-section of $10^{-46}$ cm$^2$ at 100 GeV WIMP mass. This high sensitivity is achievable due to the large target mass and the very low backgrounds in the spherical acrylic detector design as well as at the unique SNOLAB facility in Sudbury, Canada. Pulse shape discrimination is used to reject electromagnetic backgrounds from the WIMP induced nuclear recoil signal. We started taking commissioning data in early 2015 with vacuum and later gas insid…
LArGe is a GERDA low-background test facility to study novel background suppression methods in a low-background environment, for future application in the GERDA experiment. Similar to GERDA, LArGe operates bare germanium detectors submersed into liquid argon (1 m$^3$, 1.4 tons), which in addition is instrumented with photomultipliers to detect argon scintillation light. The scintillation signals are used in anti-coincidence with the germanium detectors to effectively suppress background events that deposit energy in the liquid argon. The background suppression efficiency was studied in combina…
DEAP-3600 is a single phase liquid argon (LAr) dark matter experiment, located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, in Sudbury, Canada. The detector has 1 tonne fiducial mass of LAr. The target sensitivity to spin-independent scattering of 100 GeV weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) is 10$^{-46}$ cm$^{2}$. The DEAP-3600 background target is $<$ 0.6 background events in the WIMP region of interest in 3 tonne-years. The strategies to achieve this background include pulse shape discrimination to mitigate electron recoil and using ultra low radioactive materials for detector construction. Furtherm…
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a leading-edge experiment designed to perform neutrino science and proton decay searches. In particular, the far detector will consist of four 10-kton Liquid Argon (LAr) Time Projection Chambers using both single and dual-phase technologies. The latter provides charge amplification in the gaseous phase. In order to optimize these designs, two large prototypes are taking data at CERN since 2018. Previously, a dual-phase 4-tonne demonstrator was constructed and exposed to cosmic muons in 2017 and exhibited good performance in terms of charge and…
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Far Detector (FD) will be formed by four 10-kton Liquid Argon (LAr) Time Projection Chambers (TPC) using both single and dual-phase technology. The dual-phase technology foreseen the charge amplification in the gas phase before the signal collection and is following a staged approach to demonstrate its feasibility at the DUNE FD scale. In 2017, a 4-ton demonstrator of 3x1x1 m$^3$ volume was exposed to cosmic muons and demonstrated expected performance in terms of charge extraction and light collection. A bigger prototype (ProtoDUNE-DP), with an a…
The $3 \times 1 \times 1$ m$^3$ demonstrator is a dual phase liquid argon time projection chamber that has recorded cosmic rays events in 2017 at CERN. The light signal in these detectors is crucial to provide precise timing capabilities. The performances of the photon detection system, composed of five PMTs, are discussed. The collected scintillation and electroluminescence light created by passing particles has been studied in various detector conditions. In particular, the scintillation light production and propagation processes have been analyzed and compared to simulations, improving the …
We report the first measurement of the flux-integrated cross section of $ν_μ$ charged-current single $π^{0}$ production on argon. This measurement is performed with the MicroBooNE detector, an 85 ton active mass liquid argon time projection chamber exposed to the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. This result on argon is compared to past measurements on lighter nuclei to investigate the scaling assumptions used in models of the production and transport of pions in neutrino-nucleus scattering. The techniques used are an important demonstration of the successful reconstruction and analysis of ne…
We examine the sensitivity of a large scale two-phase liquid argon detector to the directionality of the dark matter signal. This study was performed under the assumption that, above 50 keV of recoil energy, one can determine (with some resolution) the direction of the recoil nucleus without head-tail discrimination, as suggested by past studies that proposed to exploit the dependence of columnar recombination on the angle between the recoil nucleus direction and the electric field. In this paper we study the differential interaction recoil rate as a function of the recoil direction angle with…
Several experiments have been conducted worldwide, with the goal of observing low-energy nuclear recoils induced by WIMPs scattering off target nuclei in ultra-sensitive, low-background detectors. In the last few decades noble liquid detectors designed to search for dark matter in the form of WIMPs have been extremely successful in improving their sensitivities and setting the best limits. One of the crucial problems to be faced for the development of large size (multi ton-scale) liquid argon experiments is the lack of reliable and low background cryogenic PMTs: their intrinsic radioactivity, …
