Universe (Jul 2023)
Scintillating Bubble Chambers for Rare Event Searches
- Ernesto Alfonso-Pita,
- Edward Behnke,
- Matthew Bressler,
- Benjamin Broerman,
- Kenneth Clark,
- Jonathan Corbett,
- C. Eric Dahl,
- Koby Dering,
- Austin de St. Croix,
- Daniel Durnford,
- Pietro Giampa,
- Jeter Hall,
- Orin Harris,
- Hector Hawley-Herrera,
- Christopher M. Jackson,
- Youngtak Ko,
- Noah Lamb,
- Mathieu Laurin,
- Ilan Levine,
- W. Hugh Lippincott,
- Xingxin Liu,
- Russell Neilson,
- Marie-Cécile Piro,
- Shashank Priya,
- Daniel Pyda,
- Zhiheng Sheng,
- Gary Sweeney,
- Eric Vázquez-Jáuregui,
- Shawn Westerdale,
- Thomas J. Whitis,
- Alexander Wright,
- Wei Zha,
- Ryan Zhang
Affiliations
- Ernesto Alfonso-Pita
- Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, A.P. 20-364, Mexico City 01000, Mexico
- Edward Behnke
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, IN 46634, USA
- Matthew Bressler
- Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
- Benjamin Broerman
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Kenneth Clark
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Jonathan Corbett
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- C. Eric Dahl
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
- Koby Dering
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Austin de St. Croix
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Daniel Durnford
- Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada
- Pietro Giampa
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Jeter Hall
- SNOLAB, Lively, ON P3Y 1N2, Canada
- Orin Harris
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL 60625, USA
- Hector Hawley-Herrera
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Christopher M. Jackson
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99354, USA
- Youngtak Ko
- Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada
- Noah Lamb
- Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
- Mathieu Laurin
- Département de Physique, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada
- Ilan Levine
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, IN 46634, USA
- W. Hugh Lippincott
- Department of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
- Xingxin Liu
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
- Russell Neilson
- Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
- Marie-Cécile Piro
- Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada
- Shashank Priya
- Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
- Daniel Pyda
- Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
- Zhiheng Sheng
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
- Gary Sweeney
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Eric Vázquez-Jáuregui
- Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, A.P. 20-364, Mexico City 01000, Mexico
- Shawn Westerdale
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, CA 92507, USA
- Thomas J. Whitis
- Department of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
- Alexander Wright
- Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
- Wei Zha
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
- Ryan Zhang
- Department of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/universe9080346
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 9,
no. 8
p. 346
Abstract
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers for the detection of sub-keV nuclear recoils. These detectors benefit from the electron recoil rejection inherent in moderately-superheated bubble chambers with the addition of energy reconstruction provided from the scintillation signal. The ability to measure low-energy nuclear recoils allows the search for GeV-scale dark matter and the measurement of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on argon from MeV-scale reactor antineutrinos. The first physics-scale detector, SBC-LAr10, is in the commissioning phase at Fermilab, where extensive engineering and calibration studies will be performed. In parallel, a functionally identical low-background version, SBC-SNOLAB, is being built for a dark matter search underground at SNOLAB. SBC-SNOLAB, with a 10 kg-yr exposure, will have sensitivity to a dark matter–nucleon cross section of 2×10−42 cm2 at 1 GeV/c2 dark matter mass, and future detectors could reach the boundary of the argon neutrino fog with a tonne-yr exposure. In addition, the deployment of an SBC detector at a nuclear reactor could enable neutrino physics investigations including measurements of the weak mixing angle and searches for sterile neutrinos, the neutrino magnetic moment, and the light Z’ gauge boson.
Keywords