Speaker
Description
DarkSide‑20k is the next‑generation, multi‑tonne dark matter experiment within the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration. The core of the experiment, primarily designed for WIMP direct detection, consists of a dual‑phase time projection chamber (TPC) filled with about 50 tonnes of liquid argon extracted from underground (UAr) at URANIA (Colorado) and chemically distilled at ARIA (Italy), with its radioactivity assayed in DArT (Spain).
The TPC is inserted into an Inner Veto (32 tonnes of UAr) for active neutron rejection and, surrounding the full inner detector, a bath of 650 tonnes of atmospheric liquid argon. All detectors will be instrumented with low-noise and low radioactivity silicon photomultipliers developed by Fondazione Bruno Kessler, all integrated as Photon Detection Units (PDUs), making DarkSide-20k the first experiment in astroparticle physics to deploy semiconductor‑based photosensors at these scales, with an ongoing testing and characterization chain involving multiple institutions world-wide.
The careful selection of detector materials and cleaning procedures of the inner detector, the years‑long optimization of the read-out system, and the underground argon supply chain developed over the past decade are now converging, as the experiment construction proceeds at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS, Italy), promising for its world‑leading sensitivity to WIMPs, potentially down to the neutrino fog.