COLLOQUIUM DFA: Directional Dark Matter searches and the CYGNO/INITIUM project
Speaker: Elisabetta Baracchini
Where and when: 09-11-2023 | 15:00 | Aula Rostagn
The importance of directly detect and experimentally probe the nature of Dark Matter (DM) is universally and incontrovertibly recognised as one of the most compelling tasks of today’s fundamental physics. The measurement of the DM scattering directionality not only offers a powerful handle to deal with backgrounds (including neutrinos), but it grants an unique key for a positive unambiguous identification of a DM interaction by establishing its Galactic origin. We will review the discovery potential of directional experimental approaches to detect and characterise WIMPs, and illustrate how this can also leap beyond the “Neutrino Fog” bound, actually promoting solar neutrinos from background to a signal with attractive physics cases. We will illustrate the main experimental techniques employed in the development of directional DM experiments and we will focus on the Gaseous Time Projection Chambers (TPCs), currently representing the most mature approach to this pro blem. We will present in details the CYGNO/INITIUM project, an high precision 3D tracking TPC with optical readout currently under development at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. We will illustrate the commissioning and the underground operation of the 50 L prototype LIME, the largest developed so far by the collaboration, and its capability to measure and identify low energy nuclear and electron recoils. We will outline the design and prospects for the development of the already funded O(1) m3 demonstrator to be hosted in Hall F of LNGS and illustrate the physics reach of a possible future O(30) m3 experiment emerging from these developments. We will furthermore discuss the R&D results obtained by the collaboration towards the maximisation of the CYGNO potentialities, and in particular the recent demonstration of negative ion drift operation at atmospheric pressure with optical readout obtained in synergy with the ERC Consolidator Grant project INITIUM.
