Towards a massive directional dark matter detector: CYGNUS-TPC

There is now overwhelming observational evidence to believe that only 15% of the matter content of the Universe is known. Hence, the prevailing 85% is composed of non-baryonic dark matter. The putative name for the most probable dark matter candidate is Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Theoretically, one powerful route to find WIMPs is through the detection of the expected directional galactic WIMP signatures using direction sensitive detectors. Recently, the DRIFT directional WIMP search collaboration identified the sources of background events in their detector and have taken positive measures to suppress or reject them. The sensitivity of the DRIFT experiment is now constrained mainly by target mass. This motivated the convergence of all the existing directional WIMP search experiments to form the CYGNUS-TPC collaboration to build a massive directional WIMP search detector with optimal sensitivity. This thesis presents work on the possible use of signal multiplexers to reduce the number of front-end electronics required in the proposed CYGNUS-TPC detector project. Results from the analysis of simulated data obtained from the DRIFT-IId detector in a simplified readout mode show prospects for an alternative readout technology with a lower cost of front-end electronics relative to the signal multiplexing scheme. Results from measurements of the head-tail and axial range components of the directional signatures suggest the possibility of directionality with events fiducialisation in the proposed CYGNUS-TPC detector. Also, results from analyses of a 54.7 live-time days of shielded WIMP search data obtained from the DRIFT-IId directional detector with an improved fiducial volume are pre- sented. In this, the detector reached best sensitivity to spin-dependent WIMP-proton cross section at 0.29 pb for a ∼100 GeV c−2 WIMP.