Speaker
Description
The nature of dark matter remains unknown and its origin is currently one of the most important questions in physics. Direct searches for WIMP dark matter particle interactions with ordinary matter are carried out with large detectors located in underground laboratories to suppress the background of cosmic rays.
In this talk I will introduce the DarkSide-20k experiment and its physics program. The detector is now under construction in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS) in Italy, the largest underground physics facility in the world devoted to astroparticle physics. The experiment is designed to directly detect dark matter by observing weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) scattering off the nuclei in 20 tonnes of underground-sourced liquid argon in the dual phase time projection chamber (TPC). The light generated during the interactions in the liquid argon is detected by custom silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) assemblies of size 20 cm by 20 cm. The data acquisition system (DAQ) for the DarkSide-20k experiment is designed to acquire signals from the 2720 channels of these photosensors in a triggerless mode.