Acoustic Instrumentation For A Bubble Chamber Towards Dark Matter Searches

Dark matter is one of the top unsolved mysteries in physics. Its existence is well-established although its nature remains unknown. Despite the progress made in the direct search effort, reflecting over 10 orders of magnitude in sensitivity since 1984, no true candidates to explain this phenomenon have appeared in searches covering a range from similar to 10 GeV to 1 TeV. This article reports on the development of a 1 kg freon bubble chamber prototype, including the chamber recompression system design and testing, initial acoustic detection of bubble formation, and initial neutron and alpha detector response studies. The prototype constructed was a transparent acrylic containment vessel, capable of withstanding recompression cycles to a pressure of 16 bar. The acoustic signal accompanying bubble formation was investigated using three different sensors: a low frequency microphone (Panasonic) with a flat response over 0.020-16 kHz, an ultrasound externally-polarized condenser microphone (AviSoft) with a flat response over 10-150 kHz, and an hydrophone (Reson) with a flat response over 5-170 kHz. Acoustic signatures of several induced events were successfully registered. The data acquisition digitizer used, to meet the range of the three microphones, was the NI PCI-6251 16-Bit, with at least 1.25 MSps for 1-Channel.