Liquid argon is an attractive target for dark matter searches due to its low cost and exemplary event discrimination. However, atmospherically derived argon contains the beta-emitter 39Ar which confounds the growth of dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC) style detectors to the ton-scale. The DarkSide Collaboration seeks to bypass this limitation by extracting argon from deep underground, from a location known to contain significantly less 39Ar than atmospherically derived argon. This thesis will summarize the e orts taken to produce the first batch of underground argon, focusing on the first operation of the underground argon in a dual-phase TPC to validate the purity of the product, performed at Fermilab using the SCENE cryostat.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:masters_theses_2-1301 |
| Date | 30 November 2015 |
| Creators | Alexander, Thomas R |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Masters Theses |
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