XENON Dark Matter Search Experiment

The XENON Dark Matter Search Experiment aims to construct a next-generation dark matter detector, which will use liquid xenon as the target material for finding Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is led by Elena Aprile, an astrophysics professor at Columbia University.

A 15 kg liquid xenon detector had been installed at Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy during March 2006, and has been searching for WIMP interactions until October 2007. No WIMP signatures have been found, the limits on WIMP-nucleon cross sections extend down to below 10⁻⁴³cm² for a 30 GeV/c² WIMP mass. The current phase, XENON100, for a total of 150 kg of liquid Xenon, is commissioning at Gran Sasso. XENON100 is expected to achieve a factor of 50 better sensitivity, compared to XENON10, in 2009. The next generation XENON detector will reach another order of magnitude sensitivity to cover SUSY parameter space down to 10⁻⁴⁶cm² by 2012.

Participating universities in XENON100 included Columbia (US), Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy), Rice (US), Coimbra (Portugal), University of Zurich (Switzerland), and UCLA (US).

Participating universities in XENON10 included Brown (US), Case Western Reserve (US), Columbia (US), Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US), Rice (US), Coimbra (Portugal), University of Zurich (Switzerland), and Yale (US).

References

• Angle, J; et al. (2008). "First Results from the XENON10 Dark Matter Experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory". Physical Review Letters 100 (2): 021303. arXiv:0706.0039. Bibcode 2008PhRvL.100b1303A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.021303. PMID 18232850. 

External links

• XENON home page at Columbia University
• XENON home page at the University of Zurich
• XENON home page at Rice University
• XENON home page at Brown University
• XENON home page at University of California, Los Angeles
• Dark matter limit plotter with the latest results from XENON and other experiments