DArT, a detector for measuring the 39Ar depletion factor

Abstract

One of the most powerful techniques for direct detection of dark matter via elastic scattering of galactic WIMPs is the use of liquid argon time projection chambers. Atmospheric argon (AAr) has a naturally occurring radioactive isotope, 39Ar, of cosmogenic origin. The use of argon extracted from underground wells, deprived of 39Ar, is key to the physics potential of these experiments. The DarkSide-20k (DS-20k) dark matter search experiment will operate with 50 tonnes of radio-pure underground argon (UAr), extracted from the Urania plant in Cortez (U.S.A.) and purified in the Aria distillation plant (Sardinia, Italy). Assessing the radio-purity of UAr in terms of 39Ar is crucial for the success of DS-20k, as well as for future experiments of the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration (GADMC), and will be done with the experiment named DArT in ArDM. DArT is a small chamber that will contain the argon under test. The detector will be immersed in the LAr active volume of the ArDM detector, located at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory (LSC) in Spain, which will act as active veto for background events coming from photons from detector materials and surrounding rock radioactivity.