HEP-ASTRO SEMINAR | Detector Technology for Indirect and Direct Detection of Dark Matter, Speaker: Jim Buckley (Washington University, Physics)

Speaker: Jim Buckley (Washington University, Physics)

A comprehensive program for detecting and identifying dark matter should include both direct and indirect detection experiments. Direct detection techniques can provide important upper limits, but very clean discrimination of nuclear recoil events and good statistics are required to distinguish dark matter from background and to constrain the dark matter properties. If dark matter is a thermal relic like the neutralino, future gamma-ray searches could perform particle identification through measurements of the annihilation spectrum, and measurements of the halo distribution by imaging the central halos of nearby galaxies. I will discuss some of the technical drivers for both approaches, and how these are shaping the design of next generation experiments. For indirect detection, I will describe the design requirements for a next-generation gamma-ray observatory (e.g., CTA or a future space-based pair telescope). UV-blue sensitive photon-counting detectors are a key enabling technology for both ground-based gamma-ray experiments as well as liquid-nobel direct detection experiments. I will describe work by the Washington University group on the development of crystalline and amorphous AlGaN-InGaN photocathodes and solid state detectors as well as the design of very low background PMTs.