Experimental HEP Seminar

Searching for Dark Matter with DEAP at SNOLAB

Marc Boulay

Queen's University

The search for cosmological dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) is currently an area of intense activity worldwide. Detection of dark matter particles would make those the largest known component of our universe and would require significant extension to the standard model of particle physics. In this talk I will provide an overview of experimental techniques for direct dark matter particle detection, and I will discuss a new technique being developed to use scintillation pulse shape discrimination in liquid argon. I will discuss the design and construction of the DEAP-1 experiment, with a 10 kg sensitive target mass, planned for operation at SNOLAB.