2018-2019

Starting in academic year 2013/2014, the research group hosts a regular series of seminars, dedicated to our wide audience that includes physicists, students and engineers. These seminars feature excellent overviews presented by distinguished speakers and provide high value educational material for students . They prove to be the optimal venue for fruitful discussions between external experts and the group members.

The EPP seminars are registered as Specialist Course in Particle and Astroparticle Physics, co-organised by the Doctoral School of Natural Sciences of the UGent. The program for academic year 2018-2019 can be found below:

November 27, 2018

(11.00 am, Campus Proeftuin – N3 lecture room)

Speaker: Florian Reindl (Institute High Energy Physics, Vienna)

COSINUS – A new direct dark matter search using novel cryogenic NaI detectors

Deciphering the nature of dark matter remains one of the major open mysteries  of present-day physics. Thereby, the situation in direct dark matter detection is controversial: The DAMA/LIBRA experiment observes an annual modulation signal at high confidence matching the expectation for dark matter which contradicts null-results of numerous other experiments in the so-called standard scenario. However, to date a model-independent cross-check of the DAMA signal which necessarily requires the use of the same target material (NaI) is still absent. The COSINUS experiment aims to not only provide this cross-check, but to give new insight on the potential interaction mechanism. The latter is achieved by operating NaI as cryogenic detector providing particle discrimination on an event-by-event basis – a unique feature for NaI-based dark matter searches.

In this seminar talk we will present the recent achieved performance of first generation detectors developed in the last three years and their future potential. We will give an overview on the plans for the COSINUS experimental setup whose construction will begin in 2019.

January 30, 2019