When it comes to unsolved mysteries, dark matter is at the top of the list. So elusive, it can only be observed indirectly by the way it affects celestial bodies and light. The quest to identify and quantify it is not new, but questions still abound. Engineers and scientists are not the type to give up easily, and they have developed new approaches in the search.
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab announced that it will be leading the most extensive search for dark matter ever conducted. The project, funded through the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), will provide a more comprehensive and sensitive look into dark matter than ever before through the Generation 2 Dark Matter Experiments.
While dark matter is theorized to make up about 85% of the matter in the universe, directly detecting it has been very difficult. The goal of the new effort is to increase sensitivity by an order of magnitude and to unify research into various aspects of dark matter. The three main facets of this work will be Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SCDMS)-SNOLAB, the LUX-Zeplin experiment (LZ), and the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX-Gen2).
The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector has already been in use at the Stanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), but it will now be merging with the ZEPLIN (ZonEd Proportional scintillation in LIquid Noble gases) experiment. The new detector (see image) will be about twenty times more massive and one hundred times more sensitive. To reduce background noise from other particles, the detector will operate a mile underground while it searches for WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles).
The SuperCDMS-SNOLAB detector will also be searching for WIMPS, but those that are lighter and less energetic. According to SCDMS, this collaboration will occur between the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota and the deeper SNOLAB facility in Sudbury, Canada. The SCDMS location operates a total detector mass of ~10kg, but will increase the experimental payload by a factor of 10 and increase sensitivity at SNOLAB.
The final piece of this experimental trio, the ADMX-Gen2, is looking for axions, a hypothetical elementary particle, by monitoring signals stimulated by a strong magnetic field. The work will take place at the Center for Experimental Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Washington.
If all these acronyms, abbreviations and collaborations make your head spin, imagine what it is like to coordinate the effort! All of this cutting edge science depends on advanced detection equipment. That means a lot of good engineering. Best of luck at finding the invisible!
Image courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory