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XLZD: A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Rare Event Searches
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Europe/London
Description
The fundamental nature of our universe is still mostly unknown: 84% of the matter in the universe is dark and qualitatively different to everything we understand via the Standard Model. Terrestrial experiments devoted to detecting interactions of dark matter particles have not yet seen a convincing signal, but we may be on the cusp of discovery. The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment (LZ), located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, is the largest dark matter detector of its kind and recently set new world-leading limits on dark matter candidates. With future science runs, LZ will probe further into theoretically well-motivated regions of dark matter phase space to reach areas currently unexplored. Regardless of LZ’s final results, an even larger detector is essential for exploring the nature of dark matter further. The XENON, LZ and DARWIN collaborations recently formed the XLZD Consortium, aiming to build and operate a xenon TPC with 40-100 tonnes of active mass, expected to start operating by the start of the next decade. The extremely low background of this detector will allow it to serve as a rare event observatory in astroparticle physics, with high sensitivity to many other physics channels, including alternative dark matter candidates and neutrino physics.
In this seminar I will briefly describe the state of the field and the physics reach of current experiments, give an overview of the XLZD detector concept and timeline with a focus on areas of planned UK contributions, and describe its initial sensitivity projections to multiple physics cases.
