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Physics Department Colloquia

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New Dark Matter Search Results from PICO 60
Date: Friday, April 14th
Time: 3:30 pm
Place: 2241 Chamberlin hall
Speaker: Carsten Krauss, University of Alberta
Abstract: Bubble chambers have long been a tool for discovery in particle physics. Since the nature of dark matter within the standard model is still unknown, a broad search with many target materials and techniques is currently underway. The PICO collaboration, which formed as the merger of the PICASSO and COUPP collaborations in 2012 is currently operating the world’s largest bubble chamber filled with 52kg of superheated octaflouropropane (C3F8). Between November 2016 and January 2017 a blind run with an exposure of 1.5 ton days was taken. This run had no events in the dark matter search area. This allows us to set world leading limits on the interaction between WIMPs and protons. This remarkable progress promises to enable the coming generations of dark matter bubble chambers. These chambers are expected to have an excellent sensitivity now that confidence has been gained that the backgrounds we observed in previous bubble chambers can be controlled. I will report on the status of both the PICO 40L experiment, planned for operation in later 2017 and PICO 500, proposed for 2017/2019 at SNOLAB.
Host: Kim Palladino
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