Acoustic Studies for Alpha Background Rejection in Dark Matter Bubble Chamber Detectors

COUPP (Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics) is an experiment with bubble chambers able to detect dark matter directly either with Spin-Dependent or with Spin-Independent interactions. The target material is a superheated liquid (usually CF3I) that can be bubble nucleated due to nuclear recoils produced by elastic collisions of dark matter particles. The bubble growth inside the chamber is accompanied with an acoustic signature. The acoustic technique has been successfully used to have a good alpha discrimination (about 99%). In this paper, we present different studies and results related with the characterization of the acoustic properties of the detector and the different phenomena involved in the acoustic measurements of the bubble growth, such as sound generation, sound transmission and optimization of piezoelectric transducers.