UCLA Dark Matter 2025

Session

SESSION 10: Direct Detection: status of liquid/gas WIMP detectors (CHAIR: Cristiano Galbiati -Princeton)

26 Mar 2025, 08:00

UCLA Physics and Astronomy Building 1-425

170. Dark matter direct detection with PandaX experiment

Prof. Ning Zhou (Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN))

26/03/2025, 08:00

Talk

Located at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, the PandaX experiment employs xenon as a target to detect rare physics signals, such as dark matter and neutrinos. The PandaX-4T, the latest generation detector featuring a 4-ton xenon target volume, commenced data collection in 2020. One of our objectives is to unravel the nature of dark matter by investigating various potential signatures....

171. Dark Matter Search Status from DEAP-3600

Spencer Haskins

26/03/2025, 08:15

The current status of the search for dark matter from the DEAP-3600 experiment will be presented, along with a detailed description of the analysis techniques. DEAP-3600 is a direct detection experiment that uses 3.3 tonnes of liquid argon as its target material. Located over 2 km underground at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Canada, the detector is designed to observe scintillation light from nuclear...

172. The PICO-40L Direct Detection Experiment

Derek Cranshaw

26/03/2025, 08:30

To continue to make progress in the global effort to understand the nature of dark matter, it is essential to further explore the spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interaction parameter space. The PICO-40L bubble chamber is a dark matter direct detection experiment located at the SNOLAB underground research facility outside Sudbury, Canada. The abundance of non-zero-spin fluorine nucleons in the...

173. Status of the LUX-ZEPLIN Dark Matter Experiment

Daniel Kodroff

26/03/2025, 08:45

LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a direct detection dark matter experiment located nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, USA employing a 7 tonne active volume of liquid xenon in a dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC). It is further surrounded by a three-component veto system: an instrumented 2-tonne liquid xenon skin, a near-hermetic gadolinium-loaded...

174. DarkSide-20k Physics Potential for Dark Matter direct searches

Alessio Caminata

26/03/2025, 09:00

The DarkSide program at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) aims to detect dark matter WIMP particles using a dual-phase Liquid Argon (LAr) Time Projection Chamber (TPC). Since 2015, the DarkSide-50 detector, featuring a 50-kg active mass dual-phase LAr TPC filled with low-radioactivity argon sourced from underground, has produced world-class results for both low-mass and high-mass...

175. Latest results on the search for WIMPs with XENONnT

Zihao Xu

26/03/2025, 09:15

Talk

The primary goal of the XENONnT experiment is to search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a leading theoretical candidate for dark matter. In its second science run, XENONnT accumulated a total live time of ~186 days. During this run, the radon removal system was operated in high-flow mode, achieving a significant reduction of about 50% in the concentration of Rn-222 compared...

176. Enhanced recombination of ${}^{124}$Xe and the flow-tag of ${}^{214}$Pb in LUX-ZEPLIN

Chami Amarasinghe

26/03/2025, 09:30

Talk

In this talk I will describe analyses of two of the most notable backgrounds in the recent LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter search: ${}^{124}$Xe double L-shell capture decays and ${}^{214}$Pb daughters of ${}^{222}$Rn. First, we observe that ${}^{124}$Xe double L-shell capture decays have charge yields deviating 30% from standard electronic recoil (ER) backgrounds, resulting in increased overlap with...

4. Enhancing Direct Detection of Higgsino Dark Matter

Mr Samuel Wong (Stanford University)

26/03/2025, 09:45

Talk

While much supersymmetric WIMP parameter space has been ruled out, one remaining important candidate is Higgsino dark matter. The Higgsino can naturally realize the "inelastic dark matter" scenario, where the scattering off a nucleus occurs between two nearly-degenerate states, making it invisible to WIMP direct detection experiments if the splitting is too large to be excited. It was realized...

177. Enhancing Direct Detection of Higgsino Dark Matter

Samuel Wong

While much supersymmetric WIMP parameter space has been ruled out, one remaining important candidate is Higgsino dark matter. The Higgsino can naturally realize the "inelastic dark matter" scenario, where the scattering off a nucleus occurs between two nearly-degenerate states, making it invisible to WIMP direct detection experiments if the splitting is too large to be excited. It was realized...