The XENON1T experiment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is the first WIMP dark matter detector operating with a liquid xenon target mass above the ton-scale. Out of its 3.2t liquid xenon inventory, 2.0t constitute the active target of the dual-phase time projection chamber.
What is XENON1T?
XENON1T was operated deep underground at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, from 2016 to 2018. It was primarily designed to detect dark matter, which makes up 85% of the matter in the universe.
How much did XENON1T cost?
The detector, estimated to cost between €100-million (US$116-million) and €150 million, is being developed by the international XENON collaboration, which runs one of the 3 experiments starting up this year — a 6-tonne detector called XENONnT at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory near Rome.
How does the xenon experiment work?
Detector principle The XENON experiment operates a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC), which utilizes a liquid xenon target with a gaseous phase on top. Particle interactions in the liquid target produce scintillation and ionization. The prompt scintillation light produces 178 nm ultraviolet photons.
Why does xenon detect dark matter?
The XENON experiment is designed to detect dark matter, which is not an easy task. The experiment uses xenon because it’s one of the most stable elements in the universe. Pretty much nothing reacts with xenon, especially a mile underground, making it the ideal dark matter detector.
What is neutrino floor?
The neutrino floor is a barrier in the parameter space of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) below which discovery is impeded due to an almost irreducible background of neutrinos.
Are axions dark matter?
The second is dark matter. Axions “are excellent dark matter candidates,” said Asimina Arvanitaki, a theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.
Why is dark matter so elusive?
Dark matter is an elusive substance – detectable via its gravitational influence on objects in space – called dark because no one has ever actually seen any. No one knows what dark matter is.
Has antimatter been created?
For the past 50 years and more, laboratories like CERN have routinely produced antiparticles, and in 1995 CERN became the first laboratory to create anti-atoms artificially. But no one has ever produced antimatter without also obtaining the corresponding matter particles.
Can we create dark matter?
Several scientific groups, including one at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, are currently working to generate dark matter particles for study in the lab. Other scientists think the effects of dark matter could be explained by fundamentally modifying our theories of gravity.
XENON1T was operated deep underground at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, from 2016 to 2018. It was primarily designed to detect dark matter, which makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. So far, scientists have only observed indirect evidence of dark matter, and a definitive, direct detection is yet to be made.
How much xenon is used in XENONnT?
The up-coming XENONnT experiment utilizes a total of 8.3 tonnes of xenon to search for the ever elusive dark matter particles. In addition to the existing 3.3 tonnes of ultra-pure xenon from XENON1T, another 5 tonnes of xenon were purchased by the XENON collaboration.
Where can I find XENON1T s2-only / light dark matter data?
Today, XENON releases data from the XENON1T S2-only / light dark matter search published in Physical Review Letters 123, 251801 (2019). You can find the data release at: This includes observed events, background models, and response matrices to construct arbitrary signal models.
What caused the observed excess in the xenon data?
Of the three explanations considered by the XENON collaboration, the observed excess is most consistent with a solar axion signal. In statistical terms, the solar axion hypothesis has a significance of 3.5 sigma, meaning that there is about a 2/10,000 chance that the observed excess is due to a random fluctuation rather than a signal.
