The XENON Dark Matter Search Experiment aims to construct a next-generation dark matter detector, which will use liquid xenon as the target material for finding Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is led by Elena Aprile, an astrophysics professor at Columbia University.
A 15 kg liquid xenon detector was installed at Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy during March 2006, and searched for WIMP interactions until October 2007. No WIMP signatures were found, the limits on WIMP-nucleon cross sections extend down to below 10−43cm2 for a 30 GeV/c2 WIMP mass. The current phase, XENON100, for a total of 150 kg of liquid Xenon, is running at the Gran Sasso Laboratory. XENON100 is expected to achieve a factor of 50 better sensitivity, compared to XENON10. The next generation XENON detector will reach another order of magnitude sensitivity to cover SUSY parameter space down to 10−46cm2 by 2012.
The collaboration is currently designing Xenon1t whose fiducial volume will contain 1 ton of ultra radio-pure liquid Xenon.
Participating universities in XENON100 include: Columbia University (USA), Johannes Gutenberg Universitat, Mainz (Germany), Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy), Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik (Germany), Rice University (USA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), SUBATECH, Universite de Nantes (France), University of Bologna and INFN-Bologna (Italy), University of California - Los Angeles (USA), University of Coimbra (Portugal), University of Munster (Germany), University of Zurich (Switzerland), Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel)
Participating universities in XENON10 included Brown (US), Case Western Reserve (US), Columbia (US), Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US), Rice (US), Coimbra (Portugal), University of Zurich (Switzerland), and Yale (US).
Famous quotes containing the words dark, matter, search and/or experiment:
“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing—instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man’s front embraces the whole universe.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“You that do search for every purling spring
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows,
And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows
Near thereabouts into your poesy wring;
You that do dictionary’s method bring
Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows;”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)