A Superheated Droplet Detector for Dark Matter Search

TL;DR

This paper proposes a superheated droplet detector using Freon-12 for dark matter searches, capable of operating at room temperature with effective background discrimination and potential for large-scale deployment.

Contribution

Introduction of a novel superheated droplet detector that operates at ambient conditions and is sensitive to nuclear recoils, suitable for neutralino dark matter detection.

Findings

Detector operates at room temperature and ambient pressure.

Effective background discrimination due to sensitivity to nuclear recoils.

Potential for large-volume deployment using piezoelectric transducers.

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.