SABRE South status
+ July 14th, 2020 : COVID-19 and SABRE South
As with most things recently, COVID-19 has interfered with progress on SABRE South, most specifically with regards to items that require people to attend to equipment and testing in labs, or other site-specific works.
However, such work has been advancing as much as has been possible and, in other areas such as simulations and design, progress has continued largely unabated.
Many aspects of the shielding, vessel and detector component designs are nearing a substantially final state. Discussions are under way with regards to manufacturing of the crystals, and testing of shielding materials is indicating a very promising outcome.
Software development continues, and much work is being done in the area of simulations in order to ensure that the SABRE South system will be able to operate as well as possible, and to a level which will make it one of the forefront experiments in its approach to WIMP direct detection.
At this stage it is not possible to give any firm indications of a timeline, but the myriad threads of organisation and development in a project such as this are coming together, and we anticipate further encouraging updates on the progress of this experiment.
+ December 10th, 2019 : INFN visitors
SABRE Collaboration members Valerio Pettinacci, Marco Iannone, and Giulia D’Imperio (all from INFN-Roma) visited Melbourne University in order to assist with testing and refinement of the design of the Crystal Insertion System (CIS) for the SABRE South vessel. (The CIS is the hardware and associated set of protocols and procedures that allows clean and safe insertion and removal of the crystal detectors in and out of the vessel during its operation.)
The INFN visitors and several local personnel are seen in the image below during their visit to the vessel at Swinburne’s Wantirna campus.
+ October 3rd, 2019 : SABRE South vessel delivery
The SABRE South vessel has been delivered to the assembly site at Swinburne University’s Wantirna campus.
This will allow the commencement of integration and testing of the vessel with the rest of the systems required to make the detector operational.
+ July 12th, 2019 : SABRE South vessel completed
Major construction of the vessel for the SABRE South installation has been completed.
This vessel will contain the liquid scintillator for the liquid veto component of the experiment, with the NaI crystal detector modules and veto photo-multiplier tubes to be immersed within the veto liquid within the vessel (the veto is used to help distinguish prospective real events from background/noise events).
Reaching this stage is a significant milestone in the progress of SABRE South, since it allows testing of the vessel structure to begin, and for assembly of the vessel with associated equipment to commence presently, after the vessel has been transferred to the assembly location at Swinburne University’s Wantirna campus.
The vessel is pictured below with mechanical engineer Tiziano Baroncelli, at Tasweld Engineering at Warrnambool on July 11th. The image shows the vessel during testing procedures, which included hydrostatic pressurisation tests with water, and gas-leak tests using helium and a “sniffer” probe checking seals and seams for tightness. The helium tests will be repeated after transport to Wantirna to assess if any damage occurs during transit.
The results from these initial tests were all satisfactory, so the vessel has been formally accepted, as construction requirements have been met.
December 10th, 2019
SABRE Collaboration members Valerio Pettinacci, Marco Iannone, and Giulia D’Imperio (all from INFN-Roma) and several local personnel are seen below during their visit to see the vessel at Swinburne’s Wantirna campus.
July 12th, 2019
The SABRE South vessel is pictured below with mechanical engineer Tiziano Baroncelli, at Tasweld Engineering at Warrnambool on July 11th.
