Inside the PICO-60 detector, installed at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario. Photo: SNOLAB
The PICO-60 detector was originally called “COUPP-60,” with COUPP standing for “Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics.” It was designed and built by Fermilab in collaboration with the University of Chicago and Indiana University, South Bend. Work began at Fermilab in 2005, and, after extensive testing, the detector was moved to SNOLAB in 2012.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time,” said Fermilab’s project manager Andrew Sonnenschein of the below result. “This is by far our most satisfying result yet, because the techniques we used to reject background events from sources other than dark matter worked flawlessly. Bubble chambers are finally living up to their full potential as dark matter detectors. Now the dark matter just needs to show up.”
Read the original SNOLAB press release on the SNOLAB website.