DO WIMPS RULE? THE LUX AND LZ EXPERIMENTS AND THE SEARCH FOR COSMIC DARK MATTER

The nature of dark matter is a profound mystery at the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. A leading possibility is that it is composed of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, which may be detectable using terrestrial particle detectors. Recent technological advances are enabling very rapid increases in sensitivity in the search for these particles. Dr. Shutt will talk about the LUX experiment, a liquid-xenon time projection chamber, which currently holds the best upper limit over much of the mass range. He will also discuss plans for a larger follow-up experiment, LZ, which will begin to measure a background neutrino signal that will set a fundamental limit on our ability to search for WIMP dark matter.

Speaker: Dr. Tom Shutt, SLAC