World scientists meet to lift the fog on dark matter detection
A team of international experts will descend on Sydney today to help chart a new direction for dark matter research.
The week-long 2023 CYGNUS Workshop on Directional Recoil Detection at The University of Sydney will bring together world leaders in the construction of novel particle detection technologies to develop a clearer view of dark matter.
For decades, it has been known that 85 percent of the matter in the universe is a mysterious substance that does not shine like the stars in the sky – the so-called “dark matter”.
The most popular way to search for dark matter is to put highly sensitive detectors deep underground to observe the wiggles of atomic nuclei struck by incoming dark matter particles from space.
The success of these detectors will be a double-edged sword as they will be so sensitive that they will detect neutrinos – very light particles made by nuclear reactions in the sun that look identical to a dark matter signal.
Scientists will not be able to determine whether particles detected are dark matter due to the large number of neutrinos that confuse measurements. This effect is referred to as the ‘neutrino fog’.
One way of determining whether a particle is dark matter is to determine its direction as, due to the movement of the solar system around the centre of the galaxy, dark matter particles tend to arrive from a particular direction in the sky, aligned with the Cygnus constellation.
The CYGNUS project will provide a new way to search for dark matter by finally revealing the direction of dark particles. By identifying the direction of incoming particles, CYGNUS will be able to tell the difference between a neutrino from the sun and a dark matter particle from space.
Delegates at this week’s workshop will include Sven Vahsen of the University of Hawaii, Elisabetta Baracchini of the Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy, Kentaro Miuchi of Kobe University, and Neil Spooner of Sheffield University.
Event organiser and ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics researcher Ciaran O’Hare said the CYGNUS project could be a step towards discovering the identity of the mysterious dark matter.
“This workshop constitutes an important milestone in charting the future of research in dark matter detection,” he said.
“For the first time since 2019, experts on this novel type of detector will be getting together to have a serious discussion about where our field is going, and to devise a strategy to confront the major existential problem that threatens the future of all searches for dark matter around the world."