First limit from a surface run of a 10 liter Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-37).A 10 liter prototype Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber (DMTPC) is operated on the surface of the earth at 75 Torr using carbon-tetrafluoride (CF4) as a target material to obtain a 24.57 gram-day exposure. A limit is set on a likely dark matter candidate, the weakly interacting massive particle. This is the first limit from the DMTPC detector, and the goal is to understand the sensitivity of the detector. In addition, this detector is used to measure the mean energy and attenuation coefficient of electrons propagating in CF4.by Thomas S. Caldwell, Jr.S.B