2022/07/21 by E. Alfonso-Pita, Alfonso-Pita, E., Michelanne Baker +79 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2207.12400
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) Collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers for the quasi-background-free detection of low-mass (GeV-scale) dark matter and coherent scattering of low-energy (MeV-scale) neutrinos (CEνNS). The first physics-scale demonstrator of this technique, a 10-kg liquid argon bubble chamber dubbed SBC-LAr10, is now being commissioned at Fermilab. This device will calibrate the background discrimination power and sensitivity of superheated argon to nuclear recoils at energies down to 100 eV. A second functionally-identical detector with a focus on radiopure construction is being built for SBC's first dark matter search at SNOLAB. The projected spin-independent sensitivity of this search is approximately 10-43 cm2 at 1 GeV/c2 dark matter particle mass. The scalability and background discrimination power of the liquid-noble bubble chamber make this technique a compelling candidate for future dark matter searches to the solar neutrino fog at 1 GeV/c2 particle mass (requiring a ∼ton-year exposure with non-neutrino backgrounds sub-dominant to the solar CEνNS signal) and for high-statistics CEνNS studies at nuclear reactors.