Space Sciences/Astrophysics Seminar with Lanqing Yuan on Towards an ultimate search for light dark matter with XENONnT

XENONnT, a dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber, is one of the leading experiment in search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and many other search for rare events. With dedicated analysis techniques that lower energy threshold, we can significantly enhance the sensitivity of searches for dark matter with few GeV mass. We search for dark matter (DM) with a mass [3, 12] GeV/c2 using an exposure of 3.51 tonne × year with the XENONnT experiment. In the considered mass range, the DM sensitivity approaches the ‘neutrino fog’, the ultimate limitation for DM direct detection experiments where neutrinos produce a signal that is indistinguishable from that of light DM-xenon nucleus scattering.

Sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.