Speaker
Description
XENONnT is the latest detector of the XENON program for the direct detection of dark matter, currently operating at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. It employs a dual-phase liquid xenon time projection chamber with a 5.9-tonne active target, achieving extremely low background levels and a low energy threshold, making it highly sensitive to rare interactions.
In this talk, I will present an overview of the detector and its performance, followed by recent physics results. These include the first observation of coherent elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering (CEvNS) from solar $^8$B neutrinos, demonstrating sensitivity to low-energy nuclear recoils relevant for WIMP searches.
I will also report on the latest blinded WIMP search based on the first two science runs, corresponding to a total exposure of 3.1 tonne-years. No significant excess is observed, leading to new exclusion limits on the spin-independent WIMP–nucleon cross section, reaching $2.5 \times 10^{-48}\mathrm{cm}^2$ at a WIMP mass of $30\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$.
Finally, I will discuss recent results on light dark matter based on an ionization-only (S2-only) analysis, which extends sensitivity to lower recoil energies and allows XENONnT to probe a wider class of models, including axion-like particles and dark photons.
| Parallel session | New Physics Searches: Dark Matter and High-Frequency Gravitational Waves |
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