Detection of sub-GeV Dark Matter using Superfluid Helium-3 with the QUEST-DMC Detector

by Ashlea Amanda Kemp (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Friday 5 May 2023, 12:30 → 14:00 Europe/London

Niels Bohr Seminar Room (Schuster)

To date, the majority of experimental dark matter searches have been focused on the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) in the 100-1000 GeV/c^2 mass range, which would be a natural extension to the Standard Model. Direct, indirect, and collider searches in this mass range have been extensive but ultimately unsuccessful, providing a strong motivation for widening the search outside this range. This seminar talk will introduce the QUEST-DMC experiment, which uses superfluid Helium-3 as a target medium to search for the scattering of dark matter particles with masses on the order of the mass of the proton, ~1 GeV/c^2. Quasiparticles produced when energy is deposited in the target are detected by nanowires; the readout of the nanowires is then performed by a SQUID. Owing to the use of Helium-3, QUEST-DMC will search for spin-dependent dark matter interactions, aiming to achieve world-leading sensitivity to a range of theoretically-motivated dark matter candidates in the sub-GeV mass range.

 

The seminar will be given in person in Niels Bohr, Schuster.