Detectors for Dark Matter and National Security

Professor Steve Ahlen and graduate students Hidefumi Tomita and Andrew Inglis developed a detector capable of detecting the recoil of nuclei from hypothetical dark matter particles. The same detector can be used to detect neutrons from fissile material used in nuclear weapons. Cylon (pictured), their latest optical time projection chamber, was built over the last year with support from a grant from the Department of Homeland Security and with funds from the Photonics Center. Cylon can be used to determine the direction of motion for the neutrons or dark matter particles, a significant benefit for either application.

Additionally, the group recently finished a surface run on a different dark matter detector with MIT and Brandeis collaborators. That run showed dark matter searches on the surface of the earth are limited by cosmic-ray neutrons. They are currently deploying a detector underground to escape the neutron background, and they have begun construction on a large detector (one cubic meter) that will look for certain types of dark matter particles that may have been missed by other experiments.

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