Jul 8 – 12, 2024
L'Aquila, Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

DMICA: exploring Dark Matter in natural muscovite MICA

Jul 11, 2024, 3:20 PM
20m
Palazzo dell’Emiciclo, Sala Ipogea

Palazzo dell’Emiciclo, Sala Ipogea

Parallel talk Direct detection Parallel 1

Speaker

Shigenobu Hirose (JAMSTEC)

Description

Searching for dark matter typically requires a large amount of material to capture extremely rare interactions. However, natural mineral crystals like mica have been around for geological time scales, offering plenty of exposure even in small samples. These crystals can hold onto nuclear recoil tracks—evidence of dark matter interactions—for periods longer than the Earth's age. When etched, these tracks appear as observable pits. Building on this, Snowden-Ifft and colleagues in 1995 studied natural Muscovite mica that was 500 million years old, covering an area of just 0.08 square millimeters. We're now planning the DMICA experiment to significantly expand upon this initial research, covering much larger areas. In this presentation, we'll discuss our preliminary experiments aimed at replicating Snowden-Ifft's work as a stepping stone for DMICA. We'll also cover how sensitive the DMICA experiment could be in detecting dark matter, emphasizing that mica's large surface area to volume ratio is particularly useful for detecting very heavy dark matter particles.

Primary author

Shigenobu Hirose (JAMSTEC)

Co-authors

Katsuhiko Suzuki (JAMSTEC) Kenji Oguni (JAMSTEC) Kohta Murase (Penn State) Natsue Abe (JAMSTEC) Noriko Hasebe (Kanazawa University) Qing Chang (JAMSTEC) Seiko Yamasaki (AIST) Takashi Kamiyama (Hokkaido University) Takeshi Hanyu (JAMSTEC) Tatsuhiro Naka (Toho University) Yasushi Hoshino (Kanagawa University) Yoji Kawamura (JAMSTEC)

Presentation materials