Speaker
Description
One technology being examined for future direct dark matter searches is a
single-phase noble liquid detector. The MiniCLEAN experiment is a test of
such an approach, using liquid argon to search for WIMPs via nuclear
recoils. The detector, located at SNOLAB, will have a 500 kg (150 kg)
target (fiducial) mass and is instrumented with cold photomultiplier
tubes. Pulse-shape discrimination will be used to reject the large Ar-39
radioactive background. The CLEAN design allows the argon target to be
exchanged with neon, meaning that a potential signal can be checked via
the dependence on nuclear mass. MiniCLEAN will also be run with an
enhanced Ar-39 "spike" to demonstrate the pulse shape discrimination
capability. An update on the commissioning status of the experiment will
be presented.
