Current Dark Matter Experiments and Future Neutrino Experiments at the UK Boulby Mine

The Boulby Mine is a working salt mine with a depth of 1100m, similar to that of Gran Sasso. A recent infra-structure grant has enabled the physics facilities to be upgraded to include fully air-conditioned undergroun laboratories and a new surface building containing offices and workshop facilities. Currently the scientific program is based on a search for weakly interacting dark matter particles using three types of detector, NAIAD (based on NaI crystals), ZEPLIN (based on liquid Xe), and DRIFT, a gaseous TPC using CS2 gas. The latter two are in collaboration with US groups. Progress on these will be summarised,together with plans for detectors of improved sensitivity. Studies have been made of new detectors for supernova and solar neutrinos. The OMNIS supernova neutrino detector would provide unique signals from the higher flavour components,giving information on mass and mixing. It is proposed to combine this with either a solar neutrino detector SIREN based on nuclear excitation, or with the muon veto for the DRIFT experiment. The concept will also be described of coherent detection of low energy relic neutrinos, as a challenging possiblity for the more distant future

hep group

Last modified: Mon Sep 10 11:21:36 EDT 2001