DEAP-3600 Dark Matter Search

The DEAP-3600 experiment is located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, in Sudbury, Ontario. It is a single-phase detector that searches for dark matter particle interactions within a 1000-kg fiducial mass target of liquid argon. A first generation prototype detector (DEAP-1) with a 7-kg liquid argon target mass demonstrated a high level of pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) for reducing $β$/$γ$ backgrounds and helped to develop low radioactivity techniques to mitigate surface-related $α$ backgrounds. Construction of the DEAP-3600 detector is nearly complete and commissioning is starting in 2014. The target sensitivity to spin-independent scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) on nucleons of 10$^{-46}$ cm$^2$ will allow one order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity over current searches at 100 GeV WIMP mass. This paper presents an overview and status of the DEAP-3600 project and discusses plans for a future multi-tonne experiment, DEAP-50T.

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