EAGER: Research and Development of Dark Matter Detectors for Borexino

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This EAGER award is for an exploratory, high-risk, high-payoff effort to develop a novel instrument for dark matter detection. Observations indicate that 80% of the matter in the Universe is not made of normal atoms, but must be otherwise undetected elementary Dark Matter particles that do not emit or absorb light. The leading hypothesis for the nature of dark matter is that it consists of new elementary particles produced moments after the Big Bang, generally referred to as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. One way to detect them in an Earth-bound experiment is to measure the low energy nuclear recoils they produce in rare interactions with normal matter. This group will develop small NaI and liquid xenon detectors that can be installed in the Solar Neutrino Borexino detector, at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory, Italy, for a dark matter search. The detector would be inserted through existing plumbing tubes into the center of the Borexino liquid scintillator. When positioned in the Borexino scintillator, the background in the small detector due to external sources of gamma rays and neutrons will be negligible. The Borexino scintillator also serves as a very efficient anti-coincidence detector to veto internal gamma and neutron backgrounds that originate and scatter within the small detector and in the Borexino scintillator. A 10-kg detector with the combination of low backgrounds from external and internal sources should have sufficient sensitivity to test the validity of the reported DAMA/LIBRA dark matter signal. For Broader Impacts, this proposal addresses one of the major scientific questions of our time, the nature of dark matter in the universe. As a cross-disciplinary topic it also has an impact on advanced detector technology. The PI has a commitment to involving undergraduates in his research projects.