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Home  ⪧  Research  ⪧  Astroparticle Physics  ⪧  CYGNO

CYGNO

The goal of the CYGNO project is to demonstrate the competitiveness of a gaseous TPC with optically readout gas electron multipliers (GEM) as a detector for WIMP-like dark matter in the GeV/c² mass range. The capability of such a device to determine the direction of the dark-matter-induced nuclear recoils would allow to infer the angular distribution of the incident particles and hence to discriminate the signal with respect to backgrounds coming from environmental radioactivity and solar neutrinos, the latter being an irreducible background for non-directional detectors.

A 1 m³ demonstrator will be installed at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, in order to test the possibility of operating the detector in the necessary conditions and reach the following performances::

• an energy threshold of the order of a keV for nuclear recoils;
• 3D track reconstruction capabilities;
• background rejection down to a few events per year;
• a competitive sensitivity in the 1-10 GeV/c² WIMP mass range with respect to other experimental approaches;

In parallel, the INITIUM project, funded by the European Reseach Council (grant agreement n. 818744), will try to demonstrate the possibility of using gaseous mixtures where electronegative components capture the ioniziation electrons an transport them toward the GEM detectors. This technique would allow to improve space resolution of the detector thanks to the lower diffusion of ions with respect to electrons. Moreover, the presence of different ion species with different mobility would allow a better measurement of the track position along the drift direction, thus improving the determination of the track position, that is useful to better reject natural radioactivity from the surfaces of the detector.

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Websites:

• CYGNUS International

Thesis Opportunities:

For information regarding thesis opportunities, please contact: Andrea Messina and Davide Pinci.

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Local Coordinator

Andrea Messina

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