Abstract

The Superheated Instrument for Massive ParticLe searches (SIMPLE) consists of an astroparticle dark matter search experiment with large active mass superheated droplet detectors (SDDs), that are installed at the underground low noise laboratory in France (LSBB). Several factors made the use of SDDs an attractive approach for the detection of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), namely their intrinsic insensitivity to minimally ionizing particles, high fluorine content, low cost and operation at near ambient pressure and temperature. The signal that arises from the droplet phase transition generates a millimetric-sized gas bubble that is recorded by acoustic means. I describe the SIMPLE detectors, their acoustic instrumentation and signal analysis, which generated several science measurements executed through several phases over the last 20 years: the Pilot Phase with an exposure of 0.19 kgd, Phase I with an exposure of 0.42 kgd, Phase II with an exposure of 18.24 kgd and, an intended Phase III with an expected exposure increasing from 100 to 2500 kgd to be executed with a bubble chamber.

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