2014 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2014

The DEAP 3600 Dark Matter Detector

18 Jun 2014, 13:45

15m

C-112 (Laurentian University / Université Laurentienne)

Oral (Non-Student) / orale (non-étudiant) Particle Physics / Physique des particules (PPD) (W2-7) Future of Cosmic Frontier: Dark Matter I - PPD-DNP-DTP / Avenir de la frontière cosmique: matière sombre I - PPD-DPN-DPT

Speaker

Aksel Hallin (University of Alberta)

Description

The DEAP-3600 dark matter detector consists of 3,600kg of liquid argon in an ultra-pure acrylic cryogenic vessel and is in the final stages of construction, with commissioning beginning at SNOLAB. The experiment observes scintillation light with 255 high-efficiency room temperature PMTs. Most backgrounds are mitigated by ensuring excellent radiopurity and with a high efficiency neutron shield. Electromagnetic backgrounds, including those from argon-39, are rejected using pulse shape discrimination. The DEAP-3600 background budget is 0.2 events per year allowing a cross-section sensitivity of 10^-46 cm^2 for scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with a 100-GeV mass. In this talk, we will describe the status and physics reach, highlighting that it is expected to reach competitive sensitivity within months of the start of data collection.