Materia Oscura: Instrumentation Development to Observe the Invisible

Materia Oscura：观测不可见事物的仪器开发

• 批准号: ST/R002908/1
• 负责人: Jocelyn Monroe
• 金额: $ 59.13万
• 依托单位: Royal Holloway University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FR002908%2F1
• 关键词: Materia; Oscura; Instrumentation; Development; Observe

This project aims to draw on an area of expertise supported by the STFC core science programme, ultra-precise radioactivity measurement and calorimetry developed for dark matter and neutrino physics, and develop application of these techniques to the problem of measuring lead contamination in water and food.The motivation for growing capacity for and developing new lead measurement techniques is that lead pollution is the #1 cause of loss of life expectancy in the world, and currently 2 of the top 10 worst pollution problems in the world are associated with lead [PureEarth2016]. This is a problem both in LMICs and in high income countries- recent examples like the Flint, Michigan, USA, water safety breaches demonstrate that water quality in violation of WHO guidelines can happen anywhere, and information about water quality, and its variation in time, is not widespread. Even 'clean' techologies, like electric cars, employ traditional lead-based batteries; the disposal of these batteries is a leading contributor to lead pollution, particularly in LMICs.The work in this proposal aims to make lead water contamination measurements accessible to anyone with a mobile phone. Currently, such measurements require expensive, specialized equipment or 6-month measurements to reach relevant sensitivity levels for human health- even 0.1 parts per million contamination with lead produces devastating biological impacts. Developing mobile-phone assay capability makes widely-distributed metrology and real-time, crowd-sourced monitoring possible, and therefore would have transformative impact on the public health problems associated with lead pollution. While mobile-phone based radioassay has been prototyped for higher-energy and higher-rate radioactive decays, nothing exists currently to assay lead. Reaching the sensitivity levels required for lead is an incredibly challenging problem, which we propose to address by leveraging the precision calorimetry techniques in silicon (Si) detectors developed by the DAMIC and DMTPC dark matter experiments, together with the lead assay coincidence methodology developed by the DEAP-3600 dark matter experiment that gives a factor of up to 10,000 in background suppression beyond conventional techniques. Our ultimate goal is to to develop a mobile phone application to measure the presence of lead in water samples. The app will employ the phone Si sensor (the camera) to perform radio-assay, with the goal of reaching the 10 parts per billion (ppb) sensitivity level, which is the World Health Organization limit on lead contamination in drinking water.

该项目的目的是利用STFC核心科学方案支持的一个专门知识领域，即为暗物质和中微子物理学开发的超精确放射性测量和量热法，并将这些技术应用于测量水和食品中的铅污染问题。提高铅测量能力和开发新的铅测量技术的动机是，铅是世界上预期寿命损失的1个原因，目前世界上十大最严重的污染问题中有2个与铅有关[PureEarth 2016]。这在中低收入国家和高收入国家都是一个问题-最近的例子，如美国密歇根州弗林特的水安全违规事件表明，违反世卫组织准则的水质可能发生在任何地方，关于水质及其随时间变化的信息并不普遍。即使是“清洁”技术，如电动汽车，使用传统的铅基电池;这些电池的处置是铅污染的主要贡献者，特别是在中低收入国家。本提案中的工作旨在使任何拥有移动的手机的人都可以使用铅水污染测量。目前，这类测量需要昂贵的专门设备或6个月的测量才能达到对人类健康的相关敏感水平-即使是百万分之0.1的铅污染也会产生毁灭性的生物影响。发展移动电话分析能力使广泛分布的计量和实时、众包监测成为可能，因此将对与铅污染相关的公共卫生问题产生变革性影响。虽然基于移动电话的放射性分析已经被原型化用于更高能量和更高速率的放射性衰变，但目前还不存在分析铅的方法。达到铅所需的灵敏度水平是一个令人难以置信的挑战性问题，我们建议通过利用DAMIC和DMTPC暗物质实验开发的硅（Si）探测器中的精密量热技术，以及由DEAP-3600暗物质实验开发的铅测定符合方法来解决这个问题，该方法给出了高达10的因子，000在背景抑制方面超出常规技术。我们的最终目标是开发一个移动的手机应用程序来测量水样中铅的存在。该应用程序将使用手机硅传感器（摄像头）进行放射性测定，目标是达到十亿分之十（ppb）的灵敏度水平，这是世界卫生组织对饮用水中铅污染的限制。

项目成果

Precision Measurement of the Specific Activity of $^{39}$Ar in Atmospheric Argon with the DEAP-3600 Detector

使用 DEAP-3600 检测器精确测量大气氩气中 $^{39}$Ar 的比活度

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2302.14639
• 发表时间: 2023
• 作者: Adhikari P

Constraints on dark matter-nucleon effective couplings in the presence of kinematically distinct halo substructures using the DEAP-3600 detector

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.102.082001
• 发表时间: 2020-05
• 期刊: Physical Review D
• 影响因子: 5
• 作者: P. Adhikari;R. Ajaj;D. Auty;C. E. Bina;W. Bonivento;M. Boulay;M. Cadeddu;B. Cai;M. C'ardenas-Montes-M.

Characterization of germanium detectors for the first underground laboratory in Mexico

• DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/15/11/p11014
• 发表时间: 2020-09
• 期刊: Journal of Instrumentation
• 影响因子: 1.3
• 作者: A. Aguilar-Arevalo;S. Alvarado-Mijangos;X. Bertou;C. Canet;M. Cruz-Perez;A. Deisting;A. Dias;J. D'Olivo;F. Favela-P'erez;E. Garcés;A. G. Muñoz;J. O. Guerra-Pulido;J. Mancera-Alejandrez;D. J. Marín-Lámbarri;M. M. Montero-M.;J. Monroe;C. I. Ortega-Hern'andez;S. Paling;S. Peeters;D. Rodr'iguez;P. Scovell;C. Türkoğlu;E. V'azquez-J'auregui;J. Walding

First Direct Detection Constraints on Planck-Scale Mass Dark Matter with Multiple-Scatter Signatures Using the DEAP-3600 Detector

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.128.011801
• 发表时间: 2022-01-07
• 期刊: PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
• 影响因子: 8.6
• 作者: Adhikari, P.;Ajaj, R.;Zuniga-Reyes, A.
• 通讯作者: Zuniga-Reyes, A.

Volume reduction of water samples to increase sensitivity for radioassay of lead contamination

• DOI: 10.1007/s13201-022-01669-5
• 发表时间: 2022-05
• 期刊: Applied Water Science
• 影响因子: 5.5
• 作者: A. Aguilar-Arevalo;C. Canet;M. Cruz-Perez;A. Deisting;A. Dias;J. D'Olivo;F. Favela-Pérez;E. A. Garcés;A. González Muñoz;J. O. Guerra-Pulido;J. Mancera-Alejandrez;D. J. Marín-Lámbarri;M. Martínez Montero;J. R. Monroe;S. Paling;S. Peeters;P. Scovell;C. Türkoğlu;E. Vázquez-Jáuregui;J. Walding