Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2015 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 60, Number 13
Wednesday–Saturday, October 28–31, 2015; Santa Fe, New Mexico
Session ND: Mini-Symposium on the Role of Nuclear Physics in Dark Matter Detection II |
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Chair: Reina Maruyama, Yale University Room: Sweeney Ballroom C |
Saturday, October 31, 2015 8:30AM - 8:42AM |
ND.00001: Heavy Photon Search Engineering Run Holly Szumila-Vance The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) experiment at Jefferson Lab searches for a new vector force carrier called the heavy photon. Heavy photons could kinetically mix with Standard Model photons and be radiated off electron beams incident on a fixed target. They may then decay to $e^+$ $e^-$ pairs promptly or after traveling a short, resolvable distance, either of which can be detected experimentally. Heavy photons have also been hypothesized as mediators between Standard Model and dark matter particles. The HPS experiment took its first data in the engineering run during the spring of 2015 using a 1 GeV electron beam and a 4 $\mu$m tungsten target. The experiment utilized a silicon vertex tracker for momentum and vertex reconstruction, together with an electromagnetic calorimeter to measure the energy of electrons and positrons and to trigger events. This talk describes the detectors and their performance during the engineering run. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 31, 2015 8:42AM - 8:54AM |
ND.00002: Dark Photon Search with Drell-Yan-Like Process Shivangi Prasad, Jen-Chieh Peng Many models of physics beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of dark photon (A'), which is the gauge boson for a new U(1)' group in the dark sector. Through the kinetic mixing term in the Lagrangian, the dark photon can effectively couple to the Standard Model electromagnetic current with a strength reduced by a factor $\epsilon$. Extensive searches for dark photon have been reported for fixed-target and collider experiments using electron and hadron beams. We have considered a Drell-Yan-like process for A' production, where a quark-antiquark pair annihilates into a dark photon, which then decays into a pair of charged leptons. The A' signals could be distinguished from the Drell-Yan background through the decay vertex and accurate mass measurements. Formulation for this Drell-Yan-like process for A' production will be presented. Application of this process for some ongoing and future fixed-target experiments will also be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 31, 2015 8:54AM - 9:06AM |
ND.00003: An Accelerator-Produced, Sub-GeV Dark Matter Search with the MiniBooNE Neutrino Detector Robert Cooper There is overwhelming astrophysical evidence for the existence of dark matter. Despite a significant experimental program to search for the non-gravitation interactions of dark matter with deep underground detectors, it remains unseen. These experiments search for low-energy nuclear recoils but lose sensitivity below a WIMP mass of about 1~GeV. In contrast, by introducing a minimal new dark-sector coupled to the Standard Model via a vector portal mediator, sub-GeV dark matter is a viable candidate and can be produced at accelerators. The MiniBooNE experiment is searching for accelerator-boosted elastic scatters of these low-mass dark matter from the Booster Neutrino Beamline at Fermilab. To suppress neutrino backgrounds, the 8.9~GeV proton beam is diverted off-target to the steel beamstop with no meson focusing horn. MiniBooNE has completed its experimental run with $1.86 \times 10 ^{20}$ protons-on-target and analysis is underway. In this talk, I will show preliminary results from an analysis of the nucleon-dark matter scattering channel and summarize our expected sensitivity. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 31, 2015 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
ND.00004: Neutron Interferometric Search for Chameleon Dark Energy Benjamin Heacock The chameleon model for dark energy proposed by Khoury and Weltman is one of the only theories of dark energy which can be tested using laboratory experiments. The theory consists of a nonlinear scalar field whose range and intensity is a sensitive function of the local matter density, with the field becoming nonzero over ranges greater than 100 microns in only low density regions of space. We are searching for the induced phase shift due to a coupling of the chameleon to matter using neutron interferometry. By placing a two-chamber gas cell inside the neutron interferometer, we measure the neutron phase difference between low pressure (0.00025 torr) and higher pressure (0.1 torr) helium gas. The chameleon field is predicted to be suppressed only at the higher pressure, resulting in a phase from the chameleon on the low pressure side of the chamber. A double-difference technique is used to subtract the phase shift from the gas and chamber walls. We will discuss this experiment, ran at the NIST Center for Neutron Research, and present current constraints on the chameleon field. J. Khoury and A. Weltman, Phys. Rev. D 69, 044026 (2004) J. Khoury and A. Weltman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 171104 (2004) [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 31, 2015 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
ND.00005: The MiniCLEAN Experiment Christopher Jackson The MiniCLEAN (Cryogenic Low-Energy Astrophysics with Noble liquids) detector is a prototype experiment in the search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter. A target of single phase liquid argon with a fiducial mass of 150 kg is being deployed in a spherical detector surrounded by cryogenic temperature photomultiplier tubes. This design maximizes light yield and allows pulse shape discrimination to be used to separate nuclear recoils from electron recoil background events. The detector will demonstrate the technologies necessary for a future generation dark matter and low energy solar neutrino experiment using, interchangeably, targets of argon and neon. This talk will include discussion of the neutron background model and will summarize the status of the ongoing commissioning and first physics runs at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Canada. [Preview Abstract] |
(Author Not Attending)
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ND.00006: Modeling nuclear and electronic recoils in noble gas detectors with NEST Jeremy Mock Noble gases such as xenon and argon are used as targets in single and dual phased rare event detectors like those used in the search for dark matter. Such experiments require an understanding of the behavior of the target material in the presence of low-energy ionizing radiation. This understanding allows an exploration of detector effects such as threshold, energy and position reconstruction, and pulse shape discrimination. The Noble Element Simulation Technique (NEST) package is a comprehensive code base that models the scintillation and ionization yields from liquid and gaseous xenon and argon in the energy regimes of interest to many types of experiments, like dark matter and neutrino detectors. NEST is built on multiple physics models, which are constrained by available data for both electronic and nuclear recoils. A substantial body of data exists in the literature, and we are reaching an era in which sub-keV yields can be explored experimentally. Here we present a new global analysis of all available nuclear recoil data, and the latest updates to the electronic recoil model, in light of recent low-energy measurements and an improved understanding of detector systematics. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 31, 2015 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
ND.00007: A study of intrinsic statistical variation for low-energy nuclear recoils in liquid xenon detector for dark matter searches Lu Wang, Wenzhao Wei, Dongming Mei Noble liquid xenon experiments, such as XENON100, LUX, XENON 1-Ton, and LZ are large dark matter experiments directly searches for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). One of the most important features is to discriminate nuclear recoils from electronic recoils. Detector response is generally calibrated with different radioactive sources including $^{83m}$Kr, tritiated methane, $^{241}$AmBe, $^{252}$Cf, and DD-neutrons. The electronic recoil and nuclear recoil bands have been determined by these calibrations. However, the width of nuclear recoil band needs to be fully understood. We derive a theoretical model to understand the correlation of the width of nuclear recoil band and intrinsic statistical variation. In addition, we conduct experiments to validate the theoretical model. In this paper, we present the study of intrinsic statistical variation contributing to the width of nuclear recoil band. [Preview Abstract] |
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