Speaker
Description
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) dark matter experiment uses superheated xenon-doped liquid argon to probe new areas of the WIMP mass-cross section parameter space. Accurate simulations of the behaviour of both the liquid argon active volume and CF4 hydraulic fluid components of the detector are integral to ensuring smooth operation and an accurate understanding of nucleation threshold. SBC's active volume is superheated at 120K and 30 PSI, well outside the regime where experimental measurements of argon's physical and thermal properties are available. This necessitates a novel combination of molecular dynamics and fluid dynamics simulations to accurately model the fluid behaviour of the detector. The approach taken for molecular dynamics simulations applies statistical physics to derive bulk physical and thermal properties of the fluids from equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. These properties can then be used for bulk fluid simulations of the detector’s hydraulic fluid and the argon volume in both the cold and superheated regions. These simulations, in turn, are then iteratively improved to better reflect conditions in the detector as preliminary temperature and pressure data becomes available during commissioning. This talk will discuss the integration of molecular dynamics simulation, bulk fluid simulation, and experimental data to model SBC's fluid behaviour.
| Keyword-1 | Dark Matter |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | Molecular Dynamics |
| Keyword-3 | Fluid Dynamics |