Abstract:
I will talk about GammaTPC, a new MeV-GeV gamma-ray instrument based on liquid argon time projection chamber (TPC) technology. The MeV sky in particular is poorly measured, largely due to instrumental challenges. A transformative instrument in this energy range will enable a broad range of measurements, especially in the upcoming era of multi-messenger transient astrophysics. Core to GammaTPC is GAMPix, a new fine grained charge readout architecture that achieves low noise readout at very low power, and has other potential applications including neutrino physics. There are a few other amusing challenges to fielding a liquid noble TPC in low Earth orbit.
About Dr. Tom Shutt
Bio: As a graduate student at Berkeley, Tom Shutt played a leading role in the development of the detectors for the CDMS I dark matter experiment, which operated at HEPL End Station III on Stanford campus. As junior faculty at Princeton he worked on several aspects of Borexino, which made key measurements of the full spectrum of neutrinos from the sun. He returned to dark matter as liquid xenon time projection chamber (LXe TPC) technology was emerging, and at Princeton and later Case Western his group made pioneering measurements of the complex signal production phenomenology behind background discrimination in this class of technology. A member of XENON10, he then co-founded the LUX dark matter experiment, for which his group, now joined with Dan Akerib’s, developed much of the underlying technology. Dan and Tom and their group moved to SLAC in 2014 and played a major role in the development of the LZ experiment, of which Tom was the founding spokesperson. All of those dark matter experiments achieved world leading sensitivity, though, alas, dark matter has remained stubbornly elusive. We are now planning for XLZD, which will search for WIMP dark matter to the limit set by the neutrino fog. However of late, Tom has also become interested in the possibility of deploying a large LAr TPC instrument in space to measure the nearly unexplored MeV sky.
Audience:
