PTOLEMY: An Underground Experiment to Search for MeV Dark Matter and the Cosmic Neutrino Background
A cura di
Christopher G. Tully(Princeton University)
→
Europe/Rome
Aula Rasetti (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)
Aula Rasetti
Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi
Descrizione
The Universe is dynamical and has expanded by a factor of over one billion between the present-day and the early thermal epoch known as the neutrino decoupling. The production of relic neutrinos is within seconds of the inflation and heating processes that imprinted the seeds of future structure formation in the Universe. These early universe relics have cooled under the expansion of the Universe and are sensed indirectly through the action of their diminishing thermal velocities on large-scale structure formation. Experimental advances have opened up new opportunities to directly detect the CNB, an achievement which would profoundly confront and extend the sensitivity of precision cosmology data. PTOLEMY is a novel method of 2D target surfaces, fabricated from Graphene, that has unique directional detection capabilities for MeV dark matter and forms a basis for a future large-scale relic neutrino detector. The discussion of PTOLEMY focusses on experimental challenges, recent developments and the path forward to discovery sensitivity.