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Yet Another Dark Matter Search Starts in Goldmine

LUX assembly to begin this fall

By Gabriel Gache, Science News Editor

24th of April 2008, 08:41 GMT

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Image of a dark matter ring within a distant galaxy cluster

The attention of the world has recently been focused on the startling assertion made by the DAMA experiment researchers claiming that they have found evidence of WIMP particles existence,

possible constituents of dark matter, while the Large Hadron Collider was somehow forgotten for a brief period of time. The most powerful particle accelerator ever constructed is expected to become operational by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, physicists in the US having much smaller budgets than that of the European Center for Nuclear Research are preparing to build their very own WIMP detector in a goldmine located in South Dakota, located 1.5 kilometers underground. The Large Underground Xenon detector project, LUX for short, has been approved to receive 1.2 million US dollars in funding, meaning half of the cost of the project.

"LUX is not so much rocket science as about being very careful. We're dealing with very low enegies where events are very hard to see," says co-investigator on the project, UC Davis professor, Robert Svoboda.

When completed, the WIMP detector will consist of 272.7 kilograms of liquid xenon submerged in a 7.6 meters tank of water. WIMPs interacting with the xenon liquid should give off photons of light which are than captured to reveal some of the properties of the WIMPs. "For physicists, detecting dark matter would be the biggest deal since finding antimatter in the 1930s," said processor Mani Tripathi.

The 1.4 kilometer wide rock wall and the water mass will ensure that only WIMPs reach the liquid xenon detector, in the end making the LUX underground facility "one of the least radioactive places on Earth," said Svoboda.

The goldmine has been functioning since 2000, and four years later, it was allocated to South Dakota Science and Technology Authority to be developed into an underground laboratory. Last year, the site was chosen by the NSF to house the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, which will operate the LUX experiment. Currently, the mine is flooded, however there is great hope that assembly will begin this fall.

TAGS:

dark matter | LUX | LHC | WIMP | goldmine

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