COUPP - a search for dark matter with a continuously sensitive bubble chamber

The experimenters will construct and operate a 60-kg room temperature CF3I bubble chamber as a prototype dark matter (WIMP) detector. Operating in weakly-superheated mode, the chamber will be sensitive to WIMP induced nuclear recoils above 10 keV, while rejecting background electron recoils at a level approaching 10^10. The experimenters would first commission and operate this chamber in the MINOS near detector tunnel with the goal to demonstrate stable operation and measure internal contamination and any other backgrounds. This chamber, or an improved version, would then be relocated to an appropriate deep underground site such as the Soudan Mine. This detector will have unique sensitivity to spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon couplings, and even in this early stage of development will attain competitive sensitivity to spin-independent couplings