Speaker
Description
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers sensitive to sub-keV nuclear recoils to search for dark matter in the mass range from approximately 1-10 GeV$/c^2$. These detectors extend the excellent electron-recoil insensitivity inherent in Freon-based bubble chambers with the additional ability to veto higher energy neutron backgrounds based on the scintillation signal. The targeted nuclear recoil threshold of 100 eV is made possible by the increased level of superheat attainable in noble liquids while maintaining high electron-recoil insensitivity. In order to verify this reduced threshold, the SBC collaboration is building two functionally identical 10 kg liquid argon detectors. The first, SBC-LAr10, now taking data at Fermilab, will be used for engineering and calibration studies. The second detector, SBC-SNOLAB, will probe the spin-independent dark matter-nucleon cross section down to 10$^{-43}$ cm$^2$ at 1 GeV$/c^2$ with a 10-kg-year exposure. An overview of scintillating liquid-noble bubble chambers, early data from Fermilab, along with the status of SBC-SNOLAB will be presented.
| Main Contribution topic | Direct detection |
|---|---|
| Secondary contribution topic | Instrumentation for Dark Matter |