5th Symposium on Large TPCs for Low Energy Rare Event Detection and Workshop on Neutrinos from Supernovae

Abstract

The Fifth International Symposium on large TPCs for low-energy rare-event detection was held at the auditorium of the Astroparticle and Cosmology (APC) Laboratory in Paris, on 14–17 December 2010. As for all previous meetings, always held in Paris in 2008, 2006, 2004 and 2002, it brought together a significant community of physicists involved in rare event searches and/or development of time projection chambers (TPCs). As a novelty this year, the meeting was extended with two half-day sessions on Supernova physics. These proceedings also include the contributions corresponding to the supernova sessions.The purpose of the meeting was to present and discuss the status of current experiments or projects involving the use of TPCs to search for rare events, like low-energy neutrinos, double beta decay, dark matter or axion experiments, as well as to discuss new results and ideas in the framework of the last developments of Micro Pattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGD), and how these are being – or could be – applied to these searches. As in previous meetings in this series, the format included an informal program with some recent highlighted results, rather than exhaustive reviews, with time for discussion and interaction. The symposium, the fifth of the series, is becoming consolidated as a regular meeting place for the synergic interplay between the fields of rare events and TPC development.The meeting started with a moving tribute by Ioannis Giomataris to the memory of George Charpak, who recently passed away. We then moved on to the usual topics like the status of some low-energy neutrino physics and double beta decay experiments, dark matter experiments with directional detectors, axion searches, or development results. A relevant subject this time was the electroluminescence in Xe TPCs, covered by several speakers. Every time the conference program is enriched with original slightly off-topic contributions that trigger the curiosity and stimulate further thought. As mentioned before, this time we enjoyed a number of contributions on supernova physics, both theoretical and experimental. This volume contains the proceedings of the conference. The articles correspond to 31 of the talks given in the conference and they all represent high quality work in the above mentioned fields. The successful organization of the Symposium was made possible thanks to the contribution of the members of the Organizing Committee and International Advisory Committee. We want to thank in particular D Nygren and D Sinclair for their help with the program, as well as to all the session chairmen, J Zinn-Justin, J L Vuilleumier, J Busto, D Atti'e, G Chardin, N Spooner, D Vignaud, I Giomataris, K Scholberg, H T Wong, W Fulgione and D Sinclair, for their contribution to the smooth running of the workshop. The symposium was free of fees, which was made possible thanks to the financial support from CEA/IRFU, CNRS/IN2P3, University of Zaragoza, European Research Council (through grant ERC-2009-StG-240054) and ETH-Zurich, that are all gratefully acknowledged. Finally we want to thank the speakers for the high quality of their talks and all participants for coming to Paris and actively contributing to the meeting.