WARP

Collaboration

- Italy: Laboratori Nazionali di Gran Sasso, INFN; Department of Physics and INFN, University of Padova; Department of Physics and INFN, University of Milano; Department of Physics and INFN, University of Pavia; Politecnico di Milano (CESNEF), University of Milano; Department of Physics and INFN, University of L'Aquila; Universita' of Torino; INFN Pisa, San Piero a Grado (PI); ICGF del CNR di Torino, Torino.
- CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.
- People's Republic of China: IHEP - Academia Sinica, Beijing.
- Switzerland: Institute for Particle Physics, ETH Honggerberg, Zurich,
- USA: Department of Physics, UCLA, Los Angeles,

Laboratory: Gran Sasso National Laboratory
1. Goal of the experiment
The experiment aims at the unambiguous identification of Dark Matter candidates (WIMPS) by means of the detection of nuclear recoils in liquid argon. The proposed technique combines the experience and the tools developed for the ICARUS experiment for handling ultra-purified liquid argon and for detecting the argon scintillation light with the technique developed, also by the ICARUS Collaboration, for detecting and discriminating nuclear recoils in liquid xenon.
2.

Activities during 2001
During 2001 a relatively small prototype (~20 lt sensitive volume) was setup and operated both in laboratory and on a neutron beam in Legnaro National Laboratory (LNL) to adapt and perfect the readout technique in liquid argon and to study the nuclear recoil discrimination and detection efficiency.
The results from laboratory tests demonstrate that the proposed readout technique (direct detection of primary scintillation followed by secondary scintillation coming from ionization electrons extracted from the liquid and accelerated in the gas phase) is suitable for application in liquid argon. Analysis of the data collected on the neutron beam is currently in progress to study nuclear recoil detection and discrimination efficiencies.

Milestones 2002

This development activity is currently under examination by the CSN2
3. INFN contribution to the experiment in terms of manpower and financial support
The activity is currently carried on as part of the R&D for the ICARUS experiment on scintillation light detection both in the INFN Pavia laboratory and in CERN. Financial support is completely given by INFN through INFN funding of the general activities of the Pavia Gruppo II (expense chapter Dotazioni) and as part of the contribution to the ICARUS activity .People actively working on the subject are from the INFN Pavia group and from the Italian components of the Icarus Collaboration (from Padova and Torino) working at CERN. The involved researchers are 9 (1.9 FTE) with the technical support from the partecipating Sezioni.
4. Publications in refereed journals: 0
5. Conferences talks: 1
6. Number of undergraduate and doctoral thesis on the experiment: 0
7. Leadership role in the experiment
C. Rubbia (Universita' degli Studi di Pavia ed INFN Sezione di Pavia) Spokesman
8. Innovative instruments
9. Competing experiments
The project is in competition with the many experiments working on Dark Matter (DAMA, CUORE, etc.)