Directional Detection of Dark Matter with D^3 and DMTPC

by Steven Ross (Physics, UH)

Wednesday Dec 5, 2012, 2:30 PM → 3:30 PM Pacific/Honolulu

417 (Watanabe Hall)

The nature of dark matter remains one of the most significant mysteries in physics. Directional dark matter detection promises to help overcome difficulties faced by other direct detection experiments, such as differentiating dark matter signal from backgrounds. I will discuss work being done in this field by the Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber (DMTPC) and Directional Dark Matter Detector (D^3) experiments. Additionally, I will talk about the concept of charge focusing, the use of static electric fields in order to focus the drift charge in a time projection chamber. This would allow us to build a large-scale detector using a relatively small area of readout electronics, and thus reduce the overall cost of constructing the detector.