A superheated droplet detector for dark matter search

We discuss the operation principle of a detector based on superheated droplets of Freon-12 and its feasibility for the search of weakly interacting cold dark matter particles. In particular we are interested in a neutralino search experiment in the mass range from 10 to 104 GeV/c2 and with a sensitivity of better than 10−2 events/kg/d. We show that our new proposed detector can be operated at ambient pressure and room temperature in a mode where it is exclusively sensitive to nuclear recoils like those following neutralino interaction, which allows a powerful background discrimination. An additional advantage of this technique is due to the fact that the detection material, Freon-12, is cheap and readily available in large quantities. Moreover we were able to show that piezoelectric transducers allow efficient event localization in large volumes.