Darkside Masterclass

The DarkSide masterclass is a set of lectures and exercises addressed to High School students.

First Part

Lecture_Masterclass_Part1.pptx is a set of slides about Dark Matter and WIMPs

Lecture _Masterclass_Part2.pptx is a set of slides about how to detect WIMPs and a description of the experiment

Please note that:

a few videos are included in the slides; a few comments, as a guide for the speaker, are included in the slides.

The duration of the lectures is around 30 minutes each (questions included).

Watching the DS-20k promotional video is also foreseen during the masterclass. The video can be either watched in between the two lectures or be sent to the participants before the masterclass (option for remote events).

You can find the video here.

Second Part

The second part of the masterclass includes two exercises, by using a set of data from DS50.

First exercise

Study of the position cuts by analyzing 3 particular events: the students have to compute the z and xy coordinates by using S1 and S2 signals; they have to state whether that event is accepted or not (fiducial volume).

Files:

Instruction_PartA.pptx

Masterclass_PartA_Position_cut.xlsx

The xlsx file can be downloaded and used either with Excel or with a Google Sheet.

The pptx should be downloaded since it contains some videos (not visible by Google tools).

Second exercise

Analysis of 20k events to obtain the f90_vs_S1 plot and look for candidate WIMP events: the students are required to apply sequential cuts, draw the plot and check if events are in the nuclear recoil/WIMP region.

Please note that a fake WIMP event is included in the data.

Files:

Instruction_PartB.pptx

MasterClass_PartB_f90S1.xlsx

MasterClass_PartB_f90S1_5000.xlsx

The xlsx file can be downloaded and used either with Excel or with a Google Sheet.

Please note that MasterClass_PartB_f90S1.xlsx contains 20k events, while MasterClass_PartB_f90S1_5000.xlsx contains a subset of 5k events.

The smaller set was prepared in order to avoid possible issues with CPU.

A final discussion of the results is foreseen at the end of the Masterclass.

The file student_results.pptx is a template that can be filled by each group of students and used to summarize their results.

In case there is no time left at the end of the Masterclass this file should be sent, once ready (in a few days), to the organizers.