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Record W4413838615 · doi:10.24908/iqurcp19870

PICO-500 Dark Matter Detector Design and Construction

2025· article· en· W4413838615 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
E. B. Cairns

Bibliographic record

VenueInquiry Queen s Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPhysics and Astronomy
TopicDark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsDark matterDetectorPhysicsAstronomyOptics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The search for dark matter is one of the most interesting fields in physics, with groups at Queen’s and elsewhere working to detect concrete proof of its existence. The PICO collaboration has been developing and running experiments with bubble chambers for direct detection of dark matter for years, building several detectors leading up to its current project, PICO-500. This detector will contain a fiducial mass of 250kg of C3F8 and will search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a promising candidate for dark matter. The active fluid is contained within two nested quartz jars installed inside a larger pressure vessel filled with hydraulic oil. With temperature constant, the hydraulics control the pressure within the jars and cause the liquid to become superheated. In this state, the deposition of energy by a WIMP interacting with the C3F8 within the vessel causes boiling. This creates a bubble with position and characteristics that can be observed and quantified. This summer, I worked with PICO’s engineering team on the design and construction of the pneumatic panel, the system that will supply pressurized air PICO-500’s valves and pressure accumulators. I made revisions and added details to the CAD models of the system, sourced parts and materials, and created engineering drawings to allow fabrication of components. As parts arrived, I assembled and adjusted the panel, ensuring physical components matched their 3D models. During downtime, I made drawings for other subsystems of PICO-500. I also assisted in the recommissioning of the Queen’s Test Chamber, a miniature bubble chamber used to test aspects of the PICO detectors in a more accessible environment. Future work will involve final assembly and testing of the valves, regulators and manifolds that make up the pneumatic panel, ensuring they are ready for installation.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.019
Threshold uncertainty score0.063

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.001
Open science0.0020.002
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0190.009

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.046
GPT teacher head0.325
Teacher spread0.280 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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