Mainz 2022 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 5: Instrumentation II
HK 5.1: Group Report
Monday, March 28, 2022, 14:00–14:30, HK-H4
The DarkMESA Experiment — •Mirco Christmann for the MAGIX collaboration — Institute for Nuclear Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
At the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Mainz the new electron accelerator MESA will go into operation within the next years. The high-power beam dump of the P2 experiment (150 MeV, 150 µA) is ideally suited for a parasitic dark sector experiment – DarkMESA.
The experiment is designed for the detection of Light Dark Matter (LDM) which in the simplest model couples to a massive vector particle, the dark photon γ′. It can potentially be produced in the beam dump by a process analogous to photon Bremsstrahlung and may then decay into Dark Matter (DM) particle pairs .55exχχ. A fraction of them scatter off electrons or nuclei in the DarkMESA calorimeter.
For the calorimeter, high-density PbF2 and lead glass SF5 Cherenkov radiators readout with photomultipliers will be used. Within a MadGraph and Geant4 simulation the accessible parameter space was evaluated. For the prototype stage, a hermetic veto system with two layers of plastic scintillators and 1 cm of lead shielding is currently under development.
DarkMESA DRIFT is currently considered as an addition to the project. A negative ion Time Projection Chamber (TPC) filled with CS2 at low pressure will serve as DM detector. With the nuclear recoil threshold being in the keV range the accessible parameter space can be extended.