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Building a Neutron Veto Detector for Dark Matter Experiments
Nuclear and Particle Physics
Cowern, Dianna
My research involves the design and commissioning of a neutron detector used to determine the flux of neutrons in order to accurately identify these as background signals in a dark matter detector. Dark matter remains an unexplained physical phenomena for reasons including the difficulty of its detection––many background signals are nearly indistinguishable from dark matter interactions. Neutrons are among the most prevalent background signals, yet neutron background simulations and measurements are not yet accurate enough to distinguish them from small dark matter signals. My research at MIT addresses this problem through the commissioning of a neutron detector. The neutron detector is filled with a liquid scintillator which, upon interactions with neutrons, emits photons that end in the photo multiplier tubes on the detector. My specific area of research includes determining the correlation between number of photons and the specific energy of detected neutrons