I have moved on to work at the outstanding Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, joining the LZ and XLZD collaborations. I’m very excited about this new chapter! As a result, these webpages will no longer be updated.
Author: Kevin Thieme
My work on the flow and thermal analysis of the argon in the DarkSide-20k TPC is on the arXiv today: arXiv:2503.08468
Performing computational fluid dynamics simulations and heat transfer calculations, the paper assesses the prospects for argon purification and the reach of internal calibration sources within the massive underground argon volume of DS-20k. It also analyses the thermal conditions required for dual-phase operation and informs the optimal placement of liquid inlets and outlets in the TPC.
I’m so excited to finally share this with the community after nearly three years of on-and-off work on this topic!
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DSYA Cagliari
Today, I gave a senior lecture on the topic Cryogenics of DarkSide-20k at a collaboration-internal school, the DarkSide Young Academy 2025.
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NSF Review in Princeton
This week the US groups had a constructive meeting with the NSF at the Princeton University Department of Physics. Princeton is a lovely little town!
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DS-20k Mockup Assembly
With the new year, we have entered the hot phase of assembling the mockup detector in our cleanroom at LNGS. Below are a few pictures of the components under my responsibility, which I assembled during multiple stays at LNGS over the past weeks. These days, our fantastic mockup team at LNGS is giving the detector its final touches!
We (a small group of scientists from various LAr experiments) have measured the longterm stability of a Poly(ethylene 2,6-naphthalate)-based wavelength-shifting reflector as a potential candidate to substitute TPB in large LAr detectors in a 2 tonne-cryostat at CERN. The preprint is on the arXiv today: arXiv:2411.17934 and will be published as proceedings of the LIDINE 2024 conference. Edit 27.05.2025: Now published in JINST 20 C05033 (2025).
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Paper Alert: DS-20k UAr Cryogenics
Our paper Benchmarking the design of the cryogenics system for the underground argon in DarkSide-20k is on the arXiv today: http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.14071. The paper discusses the current design status of the system in view of the DarkSide-20k requirements, shows the benchmarking and testing efforts of its integral system components in a dedicated testing platform at CERN and LNGS, outlines implications of the results for the final system design and provides an outlook to ongoing activities. I am very proud that I was part of the team who pushed this project through, leading the benchmarking at LNGS and the paper writing. Congratulations to the entire team involved and thanks to those colleagues who spent their time reviewing the manuscript internally or who were involved in the editorial process. EDIT 18.02.2025: Now published in JINST 20 P02016 (2025).
This week I am participating in the 15th International Workshop on the Identification of Dark Matter at L’Aquila! I am thrilled to present the Underground Argon Cryogenics System of DarkSide-20k at this important conference. My poster contains the main results of a paper on that topic which is currently under Collaboration-internal review. Looking forward to this exciting event!
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DarkSide Summer Collaboration Meeting
The Summer collaboration meeting took place at LNGS from 10–14 June. I presented two topics: Simulations on the distribution of internal calibration sources in the active volume and the results from the mockup cryogenics test at LNGS.
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Multi-Tube Heat Exchanger Installation
This week DarkSide had a meeting with the INFN Review Committee with fruitful discussions and good feedback. I presented the results of the first run of the UAr testbed for the DS-20k detector Mock-up in the UAr Cryogenics breakout session. We used our spare time to open the cryostat and to install the new heat exchanger geometry. After performing a couple of other upgrades and maintenance on the setup, we are on track to restart operations beginning of February!
