A Superheated Droplet Detector for Dark Matter Search

Authors:
  • LHL. A. Hamel
    L. A. Hamel
  • LLL. Lessard
    L. Lessard
  • LRL. Rainville
    L. Rainville
  • BSB. Sur
    B. Sur
Preprint
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We discuss the operation principle of a detector based on superheated droplets of Freon-12 and its feasibility for the search of weakly interacting cold dark matter particles. In particular we are interested in a neutralino search experiment in the mass range from 10 to 10^4 GeV/c^2 and with a sensitivity of better than 10^-2 events/kg/d. We show that our new proposed detector can be operated at ambient pressure and room temperature in a mode where it is exclusively sensitive to nuclear recoils like those following neutralino interactions, which allows a powerful background discrimination. An additional advantage of this technique is due to the fact that the detection material, Freon-12, is cheap and readily available in large quantities. Moreover we were able to show that piezoelectric transducers allow efficient event localization in large volumes.