Welcome from SNOLAB leadership
Owing to its depth underground, SNOLAB is an excellent site for hosting rare event searches such as searches for WIMP-like dark matter or neutrinoless double beta decay. The overburden of rock at SNOLAB provides a reduction in the cosmic muon flux of over 7 orders of magnitude as compared to the flux at sea level. Still, even the residual fluxes of cosmic muons can contribute to backgrounds;...
The Cryogenic Underground TEst (CUTE) facility at SNOLAB, provides an opportunity for its users to test and operate their devices in a low-background environment at cryogenic temperatures. CUTE uses a dilution refrigerator to reach a base temperature of ~12mK, and can hold a payload of up to 20 kg. The facility has been used to test detectors for SuperCDMS and is transitioning to become a...
A short talk on the differences between FLUKA/Geant4 and current status. He can maybe highlight some results from nEXO to initiate a discussion with the DM folks on what their comparisons may look like / what the harmonization process for SNOLAB experiments might look like.
Health Canada operates three distinct environmental networks and two radionuclide laboratories, which include an array of gamma spectroscopy systems. This presentation will provide an overview of the networks and systems. It will also present a performance comparison between several germanium-based gamma spectroscopy systems using the same set of environmental samples. The comparison includes...
We discuss some small-scale searches for rare events that may benefit from the low-radioactivity environment of SNOLAB. The mechanisms include standard nuclear decays which will inform nuclear models and matrix elements, and which are of interest to other fields such as neutrinoless double beta decay. A related example is revisiting the decays of uranium of importance in geochronology. ...
A discussion of recent changes in site access policies from Vale, along with implications for SNOLAB processes and procedures and recommended best practices.
Overview of the SNO+ Detector systems (electronics, DAQ).
Stories of debugging challenges.
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers sensitive to sub-keV nuclear recoils. These detectors combine the excellent electron-recoil insensitivity inherent in bubble chambers with the ability to reconstruct energy based on the scintillation signal for further background reduction. The targeted nuclear recoil threshold of 100 eV is made...
The nEXO neutrinoless double beta decay experiment aims to detect a hypothetical decay mode in the isotope xenon-136.
A positive observation of this decay mode would serve as direct evidence for lepton number violation and confirm the Majorana nature of neutrinos, representing a breakthrough in physics beyond the Standard Model. Such an observation could also offer new pathways for...
The Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration is carrying out a phased program of direct search for dark matter using liquid argon. First, we will briefly summarize the results from DarkSide-50 and DEAP-3600 followed by an overview of the DEAP-3600 hardware upgrades, goals and run plan for the third fill. Second, we will discuss the work for DarkSide-20k, currently under construction at LNGS....
