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
Malling D. C.
(2011)
After LUX: The LZ Program
in arXiv e-prints
Araújo H
(2012)
Radioactivity backgrounds in ZEPLIN-III
in Astroparticle Physics
Akimov D
(2010)
The ZEPLIN-III anti-coincidence veto detector
in Astroparticle Physics
Reichhart L
(2013)
Measurement and simulation of the muon-induced neutron yield in lead
in Astroparticle Physics
Solovov V
(2012)
Position Reconstruction in a Dual Phase Xenon Scintillation Detector
in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
Santos E
(2011)
Single electron emission in two-phase xenon with application to the detection of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Majewski P
(2012)
Performance data from the ZEPLIN-III second science run
in Journal of Instrumentation
Neves F
(2011)
ZE3RA: the ZEPLIN-III Reduction and Analysis package
in Journal of Instrumentation
Sumner T
(2011)
Direct dark matter searches - recent highlights
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
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... |