Status of the COSINE-100 experiment at Yangyang

Abstract

The COSINE-100 experiment at Yangyang searches for nuclear recoils by Weakly Interacting Massive Particle in the NaI(Tl) crystal scintillators targeting at a sensitivity comparable to the DAMA experiment. The goal of the COSINE experiment is to confirm or dispute the annual modulation signature claimed by DAMA in the same target material. The first phase COSINE-100 experiment completed in the summer 2016 consists of a total crystal mass of 106 kg submerged in 2000 liters of scintillating liquid. The experimental shielding includes the liquid scintillator, 3 cm copper, 20 cm leads, and 3 cm plastic scintillator panels. So far, a more than 9-month-long period of stable operation has been achieved and we continue to run the detector in this mode for another two years at which time a second phase of the experiment, called COSINE-200, will replace the first phase experiment. In this article, the status of the COSINE-100 experiment and the initial performance are presented. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).