In the first half of February, group leaders Prof. Marcin Kuźniak and Dr Masayuki Wada made a long trip to the DarkSide-20k collaboration meeting, which was held at Princeton University, USA.
The DarkSide Collaboration is a research collaboration aimed at detecting dark matter, a mysterious and invisible form of matter that makes up the majority of the matter in the universe.
Dark matter does not interact with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, which makes it difficult to detect directly. To achieve its goal the DarkSide Collaboration uses a specialized detector called DarkSide-50, which is located in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. DarkSide-50 filled with liquid argon is designed to be sensitive to low-mass dark matter particles (with a mass less than 20 times that of a proton).
Both of them, Prof. Kuzniak and Dr Wada are actively involved in the work of the collaboration. Prof. Kuniak’s aim is to use this experience to lead the development of SiPM and light collection system for DarkSide-20k Dark Matter search at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy and the planned future 300 tonne liquid argon Dark Matter detector (ARGO), as well as explore broader applications of this cutting-edge technology to neutrino experiments and medical physics.
Dr Wada is engaged in DarkSide-50 analysis, and explores increasing the sensitivity to low-mass WIMPs with a dedicated DarkSide-LM experiment, as well as on developing a Xe-doped LAr detector with sensitivity to neutrinoless double beta decay process.
The DarkSide Collaboration is a highly interdisciplinary project that brings together scientists from a wide range of fields, including physics, engineering, and computer science.
