UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Chalk Talk
Graham Giovanetti, Princeton University
“Development of low-background detectors for future rare-event searches”
Physics beyond the Standard Model may be accessible to novel, ultra low-background detectors that push the frontiers of experimental sensitivity. Two such detectors are LEGEND, a search for neutrinoless double-beta decay using germanium diodes immersed in a liquid argon veto, and DarkSide-20k, an argon time projection chamber that will search for dark matter. While exploring very different physics, LEGEND and DarkSide-20k share many of the same technological challenges inherent in the design of a tonne-scale, low-background detector using argon. I will discuss a research program that addresses some of these common issues and advances the development of new detectors capable of probing novel parameter space in the search for neutrinoless double-beta decay, dark matter, and other rare events.