München 2019 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 52: Instrumentation XI, Accelerators and Applications
HK 52.4: Talk
Thursday, March 21, 2019, 15:00–15:15, HS 11
Material studies for the DarkMESA calorimeter — •Mirco Christmann1, Patrick Achenbach1, Sebastian Baunack1, Paul Felix Burger1, Achim Denig1, Luca Doria1, and Frank Maas2 for the MAGIX collaboration — 1Institut für Kernphysik Mainz — 2Helmholtz-Institut Mainz
At the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Mainz the new electron accelerator MESA will go into operation within the next years. In the extracted beam operation (155 MeV, 150 µA) the P2 experiment will operate 10,000 hours. Therefore, the high-power beam dump of this experiment is ideally suited for a parasitic dark sector experiment.
Currently, DarkMESA is studied with a simulation based on MadGraph and Geant4. Theoretically, dark photons γ’ are generated in the beam dump by a process analog to electromagnetic bremsstrahlung and decay invisibly to pairs of dark matter particles. Behind the beam dump, electrons scattered off by dark matter particles can be detected in a calorimeter.
The simulation was extended by an optical photon study, where the response of possible calorimeter materials – PbF2, BGO, the lead glasses SF5, SF6 and SF57HTultra – was examined. In this contribution the simulation outcomes are compared with the results of first prototypes tested at MAMI with 6 to 14 MeV electrons.
In the first stage of DarkMESA we will use more than 1,000 PbF2 crystals from the previous A4 experiment. Exclusion limits for the different stages of DarkMESA will be discussed and the current status of a prototype detector array including a veto system will be presented.