DarkSide

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is planning, building and operating a series of liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) that are employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The detectors are filled with liquid argon from underground sources in order to exclude the radioactive isotope 39Ar, which makes up one in every 1015 (quadrillion) atoms in atmospheric argon. The Darkside-10 (DS-10) prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 (DS-50) experiment has been operating since 2013. Darkside-20k (DS-20k) with 20 tonnes of liquid argon is being planned as of 2019. The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is planning, building and operating a series of liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) that are employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The detectors are filled with liquid argon from underground sources in order to exclude the radioactive isotope 39Ar, which makes up one in every 1015 (quadrillion) atoms in atmospheric argon. The Darkside-10 (DS-10) prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 (DS-50) experiment has been operating since 2013. Darkside-20k (DS-20k) with 20 tonnes of liquid argon is being planned as of 2019. The Darkside-10 prototype detector had 10kg of liquid argon. It was built at Princeton University and operated there for seven months, after which it was transported to Gran Sasso National Laboratory in 2011. The detector operated in Gran Sasso 2011-2012.