Thursday, May 9, 2019, 16:00
WBGB/019
Christian Regenfus, ETHZ
Abstract:
Despite large experimental efforts over several decades the nature of
Dark Matter is still a mystery, while its existence is more and more
consolidated by astrophysical observations and cosmological simulations.
WIMPs continue to be among the most popular candidates, believed to
produce tiny and rare signals in underground detectors. Advances in the
liquid argon sector over the last years, also with contributions from
the ETH ArDM project at the Spanish underground laboratory Canfranc,
give a promising outlook of this technology, which is based on an
exceptional capability for background suppression by pulse shape
discrimination in the liquid argon. It also allows for large detector
sizes and drives developments towards large next generation liquid argon
dark matter facilities. The talk will give an overview of the present
achievements in the field and sketch the future plans with the
experimental hurdles still to be taken.