Improved Spin-Dependent WIMP Limits from a Bubble Chamber
Abstract
Bubble Chambers provided the dominant particle detection technology in accelerator experiments for several decades, eventually falling into disuse with the advent of other techniques. We report here on the first period of operation of an ultra-clean, room-temperature bubble chamber containing 1.5 kg of superheated CFI, a target maximally sensitive to spin-dependent and -independent Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) couplings. An exposure in excess of 250 kg-days is obtained, with a live-time fraction reaching 80%. This illustrates the ability to employ bubble chambers in a new realm, the search for dark matter particles. Improved limits on the spin-dependent WIMP-proton scattering cross section are extracted from this first period. An extreme intrinsic insensitivity to the backgrounds commonly limiting these experiments (a rejection factor for photon-induced electrons of ) has been measured in operating conditions leading to the detection of low-energy nuclear recoils such as those expected from WIMPs.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0804.2886,
title = {Improved Spin-Dependent WIMP Limits from a Bubble Chamber},
author = {E. Behnke and J. I. Collar and P. S. Cooper and K. Crum and M. Crisler and M. Hu and I. Levine and D. Nakazawa and H. Nguyen and B. Odom and E. Ramberg and J. Rasmussen and N. Riley and A. Sonnenschein and M. Szydagis and R. Tschirhart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.2886},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science 319, 15 February 2008, doi:10.1126/science.1149999