ZEPLIN-III SSR EXTENSION
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
This proposal will enable the extension of the ZEPLIN-III dark matter search to March 2011 in order to exploit fully the second science run now under way at Boulby. The instrument has been upgraded with a new array of low-background photomultipliers and a new anti-coincidence veto system surrounding the target. In addition, the underground operation has been largely automated, bringing about a gain in data quality as well as a decrease of the resources required to run the experiment. ZEPLIN-III is collecting high quality WIMP-search data and is performing extremely well. This extension will allow ZEPLIN-III, one of a very small number of instruments taking data around the world in 2011, to push further into unexplored WIMP parameter space, at a time when both the LHC and indirect dark matter serches are reaching a comparable level of readiness for discovery of the mysterious dark matter.
Organisations
Publications
Akimov D
(2010)
The ZEPLIN-III anti-coincidence veto detector
in Astroparticle Physics
Akimov D
(2012)
WIMP-nucleon cross-section results from the second science run of ZEPLIN-III
in Physics Letters B
Arau´jo H
(2012)
Results from the second science run of ZEPLIN-III
Araújo H
(2012)
Radioactivity backgrounds in ZEPLIN-III
in Astroparticle Physics
Ghag C
(2011)
Performance of the veto detector incorporated into the ZEPLIN-III experiment
in Astroparticle Physics
Horn M
(2011)
Nuclear recoil scintillation and ionisation yields in liquid xenon from ZEPLIN-III data
in Physics Letters B
Majewski P
(2012)
Performance data from the ZEPLIN-III second science run
in Journal of Instrumentation
Malling D. C.
(2011)
After LUX: The LZ Program
in arXiv e-prints
Neves F
(2011)
ZE3RA: the ZEPLIN-III Reduction and Analysis package
in Journal of Instrumentation
Reichhart L
(2012)
Quenching factor for low-energy nuclear recoils in a plastic scintillator
in Physical Review C
| Description | This award allowed us to conclude the second science run of the ZEPLIN-III experiment; this was the longest continuous run of a two-phase xenon detector at that time; this demonstrated that this technology (which has been at the forefront of dark matter detection for almost a decade) was stable enough to produce long datasets with high quality. From this run, which spans several awards, we published competitive WIMP scattering exclusion limits, including world-leading spin-dependent limits. We trained a significant number of students and postdocs who became experts in this technology and then moved on the XENON, LUX and LZ experiments. |
| Exploitation Route | Many techniques which we developed were promptly applied to the LUX and XENON programmes which are on-going: in design, calibration, data analysis, simulations and detector operations. The suite of technical papers from ZEPLIN-III is extensively cited partly for this reason. |
| Sectors | Education |
| URL | http://www.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/ZEPLIN-III-Project/ |
| Description | By the scientific community and the media. Some benefits resulted in other areas. For example, the vertex reconstruction algorithm developed for ZEPLIN-III (Solovov 2012) is being applied in Nuclear Medicine to gamma-camera calibration and reconstruction by our Portuguese colleagues. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2011 |
| Sector | Education,Healthcare |
| Impact Types | Societal,Economic |
| Description | ZEPLIN III |
| Organisation | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory |
| Department | Particle Physics Department |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Lead Institute Detector Design and Manufacture Operations Data Exploitation |
| Collaborator Contribution | RAL - Laboratory Infrastructure, computing infrastructure Edinburgh - Veto for second run, operations support, data analysis ITEP - xenon procurement, veto components, operations support, data analysis Coimbra - data acquisition software, slow control, data analysis |
| Impact | World leading direct dark matter search results Established two-phase xenon technology - now adopted by other groups Co-founders of LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration for next generation experiments |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | ZEPLIN III |
| Organisation | State Science Centre of Russian Federation Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics |
| Department | Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics |
| Country | Russian Federation |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Lead Institute Detector Design and Manufacture Operations Data Exploitation |
| Collaborator Contribution | RAL - Laboratory Infrastructure, computing infrastructure Edinburgh - Veto for second run, operations support, data analysis ITEP - xenon procurement, veto components, operations support, data analysis Coimbra - data acquisition software, slow control, data analysis |
| Impact | World leading direct dark matter search results Established two-phase xenon technology - now adopted by other groups Co-founders of LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration for next generation experiments |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | ZEPLIN III |
| Organisation | University of Coimbra |
| Country | Portugal |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Lead Institute Detector Design and Manufacture Operations Data Exploitation |
| Collaborator Contribution | RAL - Laboratory Infrastructure, computing infrastructure Edinburgh - Veto for second run, operations support, data analysis ITEP - xenon procurement, veto components, operations support, data analysis Coimbra - data acquisition software, slow control, data analysis |
| Impact | World leading direct dark matter search results Established two-phase xenon technology - now adopted by other groups Co-founders of LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration for next generation experiments |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | ZEPLIN III |
| Organisation | University of Edinburgh |
| Department | School of Physics and Astronomy |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Lead Institute Detector Design and Manufacture Operations Data Exploitation |
| Collaborator Contribution | RAL - Laboratory Infrastructure, computing infrastructure Edinburgh - Veto for second run, operations support, data analysis ITEP - xenon procurement, veto components, operations support, data analysis Coimbra - data acquisition software, slow control, data analysis |
| Impact | World leading direct dark matter search results Established two-phase xenon technology - now adopted by other groups Co-founders of LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration for next generation experiments |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | ZEPLIN-III Collaboration |
| Organisation | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory |
| Department | Particle Physics Department |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Leadership of the scientific work |
| Collaborator Contribution | Scientific collaboration |
| Impact | Publications |
| Description | ZEPLIN-III Collaboration |
| Organisation | State Science Centre of Russian Federation Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics |
| Country | Russian Federation |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Leadership of the scientific work |
| Collaborator Contribution | Scientific collaboration |
| Impact | Publications |
| Description | ZEPLIN-III Collaboration |
| Organisation | University of Coimbra |
| Department | Department of Physics |
| Country | Portugal |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Leadership of the scientific work |
| Collaborator Contribution | Scientific collaboration |
| Impact | Publications |
| Description | ZEPLIN-III Collaboration |
| Organisation | University of Edinburgh |
| Department | School of Physics and Astronomy |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Leadership of the scientific work |
| Collaborator Contribution | Scientific collaboration |
| Impact | Publications |
| Description | HEP Masterclass |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Type Of Presentation | Keynote/Invited Speaker |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Attended by some 100 A-Level students and their Physics teachers; included above presentation plus Q&A session and informal discussion. Continual (national) effort to engage students and continue to improve numbers studying Physics (and HEP) in Higher Education |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011,2012,2013,2014,2015 |
| URL | http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/naturalsciences/highenergyphysics/even... |