Data Acquisition for the Scintillating Bubble Chamber

宇宙中缺失物质的性质是当今物理学领域最重要和最神秘的未知方面之一（参见美国P5委员会的报告，该报告为2014年至2023年制定了政策）。许多研究小组为探测失踪物质付出了相当大的努力，但迄今尚未取得成功。这些搜索分为直接和间接的暗物质搜索，两者在搜索和最终发现宇宙中这个难以捉摸的组成部分中都起着重要的作用。拟议的研究通过在女王大学建造一个新的10kg闪烁气泡室（SBC）探测器来探索直接暗物质搜索，最终将位于安大略省萨德伯里郊外的SNOLAB。SBC合作建立在PICO合作的世界领先研究的基础上。Rev. Lett. 118,2051301(2017)}，是氙气泡室工作的延伸。Rev. Lett. 118, 231301(2017)}，扩大对低质量暗物质的敏感性，这是社区特别感兴趣的区域。与大多数暗物质项目一样，由于无法可靠地将背景事件与作为暗物质相互作用标志的核反冲分离开来，PICO的结果受到了限制。该探测器利用目标介质的闪烁特性显著提高了电子反冲识别能力。这有可能探索其他实验无法企及的新的暗物质可能性，创造一个世界领先的互补气泡室。这种改进需要一个系统来检测和处理目标区域内事件产生的光，这是本提案的主题。具体来说，该提案要求支持将光产生的信号转换为可兼容处理的格式所需的专用设备，并将信息数字化。还要求支持将这些信号传送到数据收集系统所需的低背景电缆。这些电缆必须是特别建造的，因为任何普通电缆的放射性都会淹没探测器，使其无法探测到任何入射的暗物质。最后，系统的大脑（数据采集计算机）允许收集和处理数据。该系统由女王大学的两名博士生设计和委托，他们领导了相关的WBS领域（闪烁系统和电子学）。这些学生将站在这一激动人心的开创性测量的最前沿，这一测量有可能引领该领域向全新的方向发展。

The nature of the missing matter in the Universe is one of the most important and mysterious unknown aspects in the physics field today (see the report by the P5 committee in the US, setting policy for the 2014- to 2023 period). Considerable effort toward the detection of missing matter has been expended by many research groups without success thus far. These searches are divided into direct and indirect dark matter searches, both of which play an important role in the search and the eventual discovery of this elusive component of the Universe. The proposed research explores a direct dark matter search through the construction of a novel 10kg Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) detector at Queen's University, to be ultimately located at SNOLAB outside of Sudbury, Ontario.  The SBC collaboration builds on the world--leading research of the PICO collaboration {Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 2051301 (2017)} and is an extension of the work with xenon bubble chambers {Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 231301 (2017)}, expanding the sensitivity to lower mass dark matter, a region of particular interest in the community. As with the majority of dark matter projects, limitations are placed on the PICO results due to the inability to reliably separate background events from the nuclear recoils which are the signature of the dark matter interaction. The proposed detector improves dramatically on particularly the electron recoil discrimination using the scintillation of the target medium.  This has the potential to explore new dark matter possibilities inaccessible to other experiments, creating a world-leading complementary bubble chamber. This improvement necessitates a system to detect and process the light generated by events in the target area, which is the subject of this proposal.  Specifically, this proposal requests support for the specialized equipment required to translate the light-generated signals into a format compatible for processing, digitizing the information.  Also requested is support for the low-background cabling required to transmit those signals to the data collection system.  These cables must be specially constructed as the radioactivity of any more usual cables would swamp the detector and render it blind to any incoming dark matter.  Finally, the brains of the system (the data acquisition computers) allow for the collection and processing of the data. This system is being designed and commissioned at Queen's University by two PhD students who lead the relevant WBS areas (scintillation systems and electronics).  These students will be at the forefront of this exciting and groundbreaking measurement which has the potential to lead the field in an entirely new direction.