Search for dark matter with the PICASSO experiment

Abstract

The superheated droplet technique exploits the fact that bubble formation is triggered by a heat spike produced during energy deposition of charged particles traversing a metastable liquid. This process allows for an efficient suppression of low-ionizing backgrounds. Moreover the possibility of using cheap room temperature superheated liquids such as fluorinated halocarbons, as well as low energy thresholds render this technique interesting for large mass, direct neutralino searches.