The PICO experiment uses superheated bubble chambers located at SNOLAB for direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), one of the candidate particles for dark matter. Bubbles form in the detector when a particle interacts with a nucleus of the target fluid, and the recoiling deposits enough energy to nucleate a bubble in the superheated fluid. Much of the data analysis for PICO focuses on determining what type of particle caused a bubble to form. The differentiation is made by analysing signals from pressure sensors, piezoelectric acoustic sensors, and stereoscopic cameras. This talk will present an overview of the sensors and analysis which are used to discriminate between WIMP interactions and background events in the PICO 2L detector, with a focus on the role of image analysis and the potential sensitivity of the detector if good discrimination can be realized.
Bubble chambers for experiments in nuclear astrophysics