UCLA Dark Matter 2018

Session

Session 14

Feb 23, 2018, 1:30 PM

UCLA Faculty Center

Conveners

Session 14: Dark Matter Detection: New Proposals

• Reina Maruyama

123. Peter F. Smith (UCLA): The HUNTER experiment: proposed detection of keV-range sterile neutrinos by energy-momentum reconstruction of atomic K-capture

PETER F SMITH (UCLA)

2/23/18, 1:30 PM

Talk

Right-handed or sterile neutrinos in the keV mass range have been proposed as an explanation of the galactic dark matter. Although direct detection of these is not feasible at the present time, the existence of such neutrinos could be demonstrated in the laboratory as rare events in atomic K-capture, emitting a neutrino together with atomic recoil, the K-vacancy then filled from a higher...

124. Philippe Gros (Queen's U., Kingston, Canada): NEWS-G: search for low-mass WIMPS with Spherical Proportional Counters

Philippe Gros (Queen's University, Kingston, Canada)

2/23/18, 1:45 PM

Talk

NEWS-G (New Experiments With Spheres-Gas) is a direct dark matter detection experiment using Spherical Proportional Counters (SPCs). It uses light noble gases to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) down to the sub-GeV/c$^2$ mass region. The NEWS-G project builds on the experience gathered with the SEDINE detector, a 60cm SPC which has been operating for several years at...

127. Tien-Tien Yu (CERN): Exploring the sub-GeV Dark Matter Frontier with SENSEI

Tien-Tien Yu (CERN)

2/23/18, 2:00 PM

Talk

SENSEI is a small-scale silicon CCD detector designed to search for sub-GeV dark matter. The Skipper readout technology employed by SENSEI has sensitivity to single-electron signals, thus giving SENSEI one of the lowest thresholds ever demonstrated in DM direct detection. This low threshold will allow for unprecedented sensitivity to the largely unexplored, but theoretically well-motivated,...

125. Joshua Berger (U. of Wisconsin-Madison): Searching for Boosted Dark Dark Matter in Large Volume Neutrino Detectors

Joshua Berger (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

2/23/18, 2:15 PM

Talk

We study novel scenarios where thermal dark matter (DM) can be efficiently captured in the Sun and annihilate into boosted dark matter. We study scenarios which can yield viable thermal relic DM with masses O(1)-O(100) GeV. Taking advantage of the energetic deposits that arise when the boosted DM scatters off matter, we propose a detection strategy which uses large volume neutrino detectors....

126. Gulden Othman (U. of North Carolina-Chapel HIll): Low-Mass WIMP Search Using the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR

Gulden Othman (University Of North Carolina)

2/23/18, 2:30 PM

Talk

The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is currently searching for neutrinoless double-beta decays in germanium-76 with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility to deploy a tonne-scale experiment in a phased and modular fashion. It consists of two modular arrays of natural and $^{76}$Ge-enriched germanium detectors totaling 44.1 kg, of which 29.7 kg is enriched, operating at the 4850' level of the Sanford...

231. Omar Moreno (SLAC): First Results from the Heavy Photon Search

Omar Moreno (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

2/23/18, 2:45 PM

Talk

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) experiment at Jefferson Lab is searching for a new U(1) vector boson ("heavy photon", "dark photon" or A') in the mass range of 20-500 MeV/c2. An A' in this mass range is theoretically favorable and may also mediate dark matter interactions. The A' couples to the ordinary photon through kinetic mixing, which induces its coupling to electric charge. Since heavy...