Initial testing of a new detector has just been completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This detector has been designed to work alongside another detector to help in the task of distinguishing between ordinary neutrons and particles that could be dark matter. Eventually, the detector will be sent out to an underground laboratory, such as the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, still in the planning stages. Testing the detector involved exposing it to a neutron source to precisely calibrate its sensitivity.
“We’re making a precise measurement of the energy spectrum of the neutron background,” said Jocelyn Monroe, an MIT physicist who worked on the project. Signals caught by the dark matter detector will be ignored if they are also caught by the neutron detector, but signals that come through only in the dark matter detector could be potential evidence towards the discovery of this mysterious, unknown matter.
