Snowmass 2021 Scintillating Bubble Chambers: Liquid-noble Bubble Chambers for Dark Matter and CE$$\nu$$NS Detection

Conference · Thu Jul 21 04:00:00 EDT 2022

OSTI ID:1880585

Alfonso-Pita, E.

The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) Collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers for the quasi-background-free detection of low-mass (GeV-scale) dark matter and coherent scattering (CE$$\nu$$NS) of low-energy (MeV-scale) neutrinos. The first physics-scale demonstrator of this technique, a 10-kg liquid argon bubble chamber dubbed SBC-LAr10, is now being commissioned at Fermilab. This device will calibrate the background discrimination power and sensitivity of superheated argon to nuclear recoils at energies down to 100 eV. A second functionally-identical detector with a focus on radiopure construction is being built for SBC's first dark matter search at SNOLAB. The projected spin-independent sensitivity of this search is approximately $$10^{-43}$$ cm$^2$ at 1 GeV$/c^2$ dark matter particle mass. The scalability and background discrimination power of the liquid-noble bubble chamber make this technique a compelling candidate for future dark matter searches to the solar neutrino fog at 1 GeV$/c^2$ particle mass (requiring a $$\sim$$ton-year exposure with non-neutrino backgrounds sub-dominant to the solar CE$$\nu$$NS signal) and for high-statistics CE$$\nu$$NS studies at nuclear reactors.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1880585
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-CONF-22-535-LDRD-PPD; arXiv:2207.12400; oai:inspirehep.net:2126035
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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