Liquefied noble gases, such as LXe, LAr, and LNe, have great potential in the search for Weakly Interacting Mass Particle (WIMP) dark matter. They are easily purified, have large scintillation and ionization yields for nuclear recoils, and exhibit effective discrimination between electronic and nuclear recoils. A significant advantage compared to more traditional WIMP search materials is that detectors based on liquefied noble gases may be scaled to large active masses in a straightforward and inexpensive manner.
This proposal from the Yale, Brown and Case Western Reserve Universities requests funding for three R&D topics with broad application to liquefied noble gas WIMP detectors: 1. Efficient purification of large quantities of LXe, LAr, and LNe. 2. Charge amplification in two-phase LXe and LAr detectors. 3. Development of low-radioactivity quartz photomultipliers that can be operated at low temperatures. These R&D projects could allow avenues for improvement of the performance of future dark matter experiments based on liquefied noble gases.
Development of technologies related to LXe, LAr, and LNe (including purification, scintillation detection, and ionization detection) are relevant to the increasingly large number of experiments worldwide that use liquefied noble gases as detection materials for neutrinos or gamma rays. These projects will also result in technical training in radiation detection, cryogenics, low-noise electronics, and gas purification for graduate students at the collaborating institutions.
