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SIMPLE (Superheated Instrument for Massive ParticLe Experiments) is a detector designed to search for evidence of galactic dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) using superheated freon droplets suspended in a gel matrix. The detector (SDD) operation is based on the irradiation-induced phase transition of a superheated liquid (droplet) to the gas (bubble) phase. Bubble nucleation occurs if the deposited energy is greater than ~200 keV/micron, making the SDD insensitive to numerous backgrounds associated with the more traditional detectors of dark matter searches.   Such detectors have been explored for decades as dosimeters, in which the concentration of freon is ~ 0.03 g per liter. The SIMPLE device, in contrast, contains over 10 g of active freon mass per liter.

 

 

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