DARK MATTER DIRECT DETECTION
BU-MIT-BRANDEIS PROJECT
The goal of our team is to develop a novel detector for direct detection of Dark Matter. The WIMP detector is a Time Projection Chamber (TPC), consisting of a target gas volume in a strong electric field (~1MV/mm).
A nuclear recoil in the target volume will ionize the gas as it loses energy; a low pressure gas is used to extend the ranges of these ionization tracks to a few milimeters for typical WIMP-induced recoil energies (~100 keV).
The detector uses CF4 as a target gas, which allows detection via scintillation photons from the electron avalanche, as well as sensitivity to spin dependent interactions.
A CCD camera is used to image the scintillation light caused by the recoiling nucleus and thus determine its direction of travel. The data imaged by the camera is then processed and analyzed using a ROOT-based analysis framework.