We present results from the direct search for dark matter with the XENON100 detector, installed underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN, Italy. XENON100 is a twophase time-projection chamber with a 62 kg liquid xenon target. Interaction vertex reconstruction in three dimensions with millimeter precision allows the selection of only the innermost 48 kg as the ultralow background fiducial target. In 100.9 live days of data, acquired between January and June 2010, no evidence for dark matter is found. Three candidate events were observed in the signal region with an expected background of (1.8±0.6) events. This leads to the most stringent limit on dark matter interactions today, excluding spin-independent elastic weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) nucleon scattering cross sections above 7.0×10-45 cm2 for a WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c2 at 90% confidence level. (13) We present results from the direct search for dark matter with the XENON100 detector, installed underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN, Italy. XENON100 is a two-phase time projection chamber with a 62 kg liquid xenon target. Interaction vertex reconstruction in three dimensions with millimeter precision allows to select only the innermost 48 kg as ultra-low background fiducial target. In 100.9 live days of data, acquired between January and June 2010, no evidence for dark matter is found. Three candidate events were observed in a pre-defined signal region with an expected background of (1.8 ± 0.6) events. This leads to the most stringent limit on dark matter interactions today, excluding spin-independent elastic WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-sections above 7.0 × 10 −45 cm 2 for a WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c 2 at 90% confidence level.

We report the first dark matter search results from XENON1T, a ∼2000-kg-target-mass dual-phase (liquid-gas) xenon time projection chamber in operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy and the first ton-scale detector of this kind. The blinded search used 34.2 live days of data acquired between November 2016 and January 2017. Inside the ð1042 AE 12Þ-kg fiducial mass and in the ½5; 40 keV nr energy range of interest for weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter searches, the electronic recoil background was ð1.93 AE 0.25Þ × 10 −4 events=ðkg × day × keV ee Þ, the lowest ever achieved in such a dark matter detector. A profile likelihood analysis shows that the data are consistent with the background-only

DARk matter WImp search with liquid xenoN (DARWIN) will be an experiment for the direct detection of dark matter using a multi-ton liquid xenon time projection chamber at its core. Its primary goal will be to explore the experimentally accessible parameter space for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in a wide mass-range, until neutrino interactions with the target become an irreducible background. The prompt scintillation light and the charge signals induced by particle interactions in the xenon will be observed by VUV sensitive, ultra-low background photosensors. Besides its excellent sensitivity to WIMPs above a mass of 5 GeV/c(2), such a detector with its large mass, lowenergy threshold and ultra-low background level will also be sensitive to other rare interactions. It will search for solar axions, galactic axion-like particles and the neutrinoless double-beta decay of (136)Xe, as well as measure the low-energy solar neutrino flux with < 1% precision, observe coherent neutrinonucleus interactions, and detect galactic supernovae. We present the concept of the DARWIN detector and discuss its physics reach, the main sources of backgrounds and the ongoing detector design and RD; efforts.

The XENON1T experiment is currently in the commissioning phase at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy. In this article we study the experiment's expected sensitivity to the spinindependent WIMP-nucleon interaction cross section, based on Monte Carlo predictions of the electronic and nuclear recoil backgrounds. The total electronic recoil background in 1 tonne fiducial volume and (1, 12) keV electronic recoil equivalent energy region, before applying any selection to discriminate between electronic and nuclear recoils, is (1.80 ± 0.15) • 10(−)(4) (kg•day•keV)(−)(1), mainly due to the decay of (222)Rn daughters inside the xenon target. The nuclear recoil background in the corresponding nuclear recoil equivalent energy region (4, 50) keV, is composed of (0.6 ± 0.1) (t•y)(−)(1) from radiogenic neutrons, (1.8 ± 0.3) • 10(−)(2) (t•y)(−)(1) from coherent scattering of neutrinos, and less than 0.01 (t•y)(−)(1) from muon-induced neutrons. The sensitivity of XENON1T is calculated with the Profile Likelihood Ratio method, after converting the deposited energy of electronic and nuclear recoils into the scintillation and ionization signals seen in the detector. We take into account the systematic uncertainties on the photon and electron emission model, and on the estimation of the backgrounds, treated as nuisance parameters. The main contribution comes from the relative scintillation efficiency Script L(eff), which affects both the signal from WIMPs and the nuclear recoil backgrounds. After a 2 y measurement in 1 t fiducial volume, the sensitivity reaches a minimum cross section of 1.6 • 10(−)(47) cm(2) at m() = 50 GeV/c(2).

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 3.2 t liquid xenon inventory, 2.0 t constitute the active target of the dual-phase time projection chamber. The scintillation and ionization signals from particle interactions are detected with low-background photomultipliers. This article describes the XENON1T instrument and its subsystems as well as strategies to achieve an unprecedented low background level. First results on the detector response and the performance of the subsystems are also presented.

We present new experimental constraints on the elastic, spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon cross section using recent data from the XENON100 experiment, operated in the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. An analysis of 224.6 live days × 34 kg of exposure acquired during 2011 and 2012 revealed no excess signal due to axial-vector WIMP interactions with 129 Xe and 131 Xe nuclei. This leads to the most stringent upper limits on WIMP-neutron cross sections for WIMP masses above 6 GeV/c 2 , with a minimum cross section of 3.5×10 −40 cm 2 at a WIMP mass of 45 GeV/c 2 , at 90% confidence level.

We present the case for a dark matter detector with directional sensitivity. This document was developed at the 2009 CYGNUS workshop on directional dark matter detection, and contains contributions from theorists and experimental groups in the field. We describe the need for a dark matter detector with directional sensitivity; each directional dark matter experiment presents their project's status; and we close with a feasibility study for scaling up to a one ton directional detector, which would cost around $150M.

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