Search for high-energy dark matter interactions with the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment

by Sam Eriksen (University of Bristol (GB))

Wednesday 21 Oct 2026, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/London

Small Lecture Theatre (Poynting)

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter search experiment, a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber operating at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, USA, has demonstrated the world's leading sensitivity to searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). LZ's exceptional sensitivity enables this new search for dark matter interactions that can produce high-energy (O(100) keV) nuclear recoils, a region where LZ's modelled backgrounds produce much less than one event in the investigated 2.84 tonne-years exposure. Through a model-agnostic non-relativistic effective field theory (NR-EFT) framework, signals arising from vector, axial, and dipole WIMP-nucleon couplings are probed. This seminar will describe the experiment and the results from the most recent NR-EFT analysis of nuclear recoils up to 270 keV.