2015 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2015

The DEAP-3600 Dark Matter Experiment -- Updates and First Commissioning Data Results

15 Jun 2015, 16:15

30m

CCIS L1-160 (University of Alberta)

Invited Speaker / Conférencier invité Particle Physics / Physique des particules (PPD) M2-7 Cosmic frontier: Dark matter I (PPD-DTP) / Frontière cosmique: matière sombre I (PPD-DPT)

Speaker

Dr Bei Cai (Queen's University)

Description

The DEAP-3600 experiment uses 3.6 tons of liquid argon for a sensitive dark matter search, with a target 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. Scintillation light in liquid argon is collected with 255 high efficiency photomultiplier tubes. Pulse shape discrimination is used to reject electromagnetic backgrounds from the WIMP induced nuclear recoil signal. We have started taking commissioning data. In this talk we will present the status of the experiment and results from analysis of the first commissioning data.