Completing our Universe: Direct Detection of Dark Matter with Cryogenic Liquid Noble Gases
نویسندگان
چکیده
Leading postulations in supersymmetry indicate that the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) accounts for the bulk of mass observed as dark matter in the Universe. Cryogenic liquid noble detectors are expected to discover these particles within the next two years. This experiment investigates the limits of detectors designed around the XENON10 prototype in determination of WIMP mass and interacting cross section, incorporating the latest detector capability information. Phase I of this experiment predicts the bounds with which WIMP mass can be determined for both liquid Xenon (LXe) and liquid Argon (LAr) detector targets for a fixed, best-motivated cross section of 10 cm and detector scales of .1, 1, 10 and 100 tons. Monte Carlo simulations using the C++ based Root histogramming package fit 21 000 generated energy spectra and isolate the mass-dependent exponential parameter. It was determined that upper and lower limits could be set for small masses under 100 – 200 GeV, with larger detectors exhibiting greater determination ranges and LXe generally outperforming LAr. Phase II of the experiment abandons the fixed cross section assumption, using analytical functions to place best-scenario bounds on how well both WIMP mass and interacting cross section could be determined for both LXe and LAr targets with detectors of .1, 1 and 10 ton target masses. Phase II uses Root to compare several analytically generated experimental energy spectra with nearly a million comparison spectra, computing the Chi Square of each base (experimental) histogram with each comparison histogram to yield confidencelevel bounds for mass and cross section. Larger detectors were able to confine probable mass and cross section combinations to much narrower bands than 100 kg-scale detectors but still resulted in infinite mass-cross section combinations for WIMPs with mass greater than about 100 GeV. This study underscores the value of cryogenic liquid noble dark matter detectors on the ton scale and larger in order to discover the basic parameters of the particles that dominate our Universe. * Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN
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