Searching for Dark Matter with the DarkSide-20k Experiment

The nature of dark matter is one of the most fundamental open questions in physics, and the DarkSide-20k experiment is at the forefront of technology designed to pursue this question. The experiment will instrument 20 tonnes of low radioactivity liquid argon. The detector consists of an inner two-phase detector and multiple layers of outer detectors to veto background events. This enables the experiment to measure dark matter interaction cross sections with two orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity over current experiments. The success of the DarkSide-20k experiment depends on a careful understanding of the response of the detector. The PhD student project is to work on developing a simulation of the silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), the sensors used to readout the inner detector and veto, developing algorithms to identify and characterise the sources of noise associated with these sensors. Additionally the student will develop a test-stand to measure the response of the SiPMs for use in DarkSide-20k as well as other hardware for use in the veto system. Analysis of these data and comparisons with simulation will be made to understand the detector and so meet the sensitivity design goal for the DarkSide-20k experiment.