[Physstaff] Glasgow Colloquium FW: Wd 21/1 at 3pm; Dr Chamkaur Ghag , "Direct dark matter detection with the LUX and LZ experiments "

[Daniel Oi]

>From UGlasgow Physics. This coincides with the colloquium we are having this week by Prof Katarina Lorenz.

From: Sonja Franke-Arnold [mailto:Sonja.Franke-Arnold at glasgow.ac.uk]
Sent: 19 January 2015 15:58
To: phas-staff at glasgow.ac.uk; phas-pgall at glasgow.ac.uk; phas-hon-staff at glasgow.ac.uk
Cc: Daniel Oi
Subject: Colloquium Wd 21/1 at 3pm; Dr Chamkaur Ghag , "Direct dark matter detection with the LUX and LZ experiments "


Dear All,
please note this week's colloquium:

speaker:  Dr Chamkaur Ghag (University College London)
title:  Direct dark matter detection with the LUX and LZ experiments (abstract underneath)
date:  21/1/15
time:  3pm to 4pm, followed by coffee and doughnuts
place:  Kelvin Building, room 222

Best wishes,
Sonja

____________

Discovery of the nature of dark matter is internationally recognised as one of the greatest contemporary challenges in science, fundamental to our understanding of the Universe. The most compelling candidates for dark matter are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that arise naturally in several models of physics beyond the Standard Model. The discovery of galactic WIMPs would therefore enlighten two of the outstanding problems of modern physics - the matter composition of the Universe and the extrapolation of the Standard Model of particle physics to GUT scales. Although no definitive signal has yet been discovered, the worldwide race towards direct detection has been dramatically accelerated by the remarkable progress and evolution of liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chambers (TPCs). They have shifted the scale of target mass by orders of magnitude whilst simultaneously reducing backgrounds to unprecedented low levels, becoming the leaders of the field and offering the most promising prospects for a first definitive detection.

I will present on the current status in the worldwide hunt for WIMPs, and focus on the LXe TPC based LUX experiment, operated in the Davis Cavern of the SURF laboratory, USA, that announced results from it's first science run last year. From an exposure of 85 days, having found no evidence of signal above expected background, LUX has set constraints on scalar WIMP-nucleon interactions above 7.6x10-46 cm2 at 33 GeV/c2 WIMP mass (90% C.L.) - three times more sensitive than any competing experiment. This first result also seriously challenges the interpretation of hints of signal detected in other experiments as arising from low-mass WIMPs. Finally, I will report on the multi-tonne successor to LUX: the LZ experiment. This instrument will have sensitivity ideally matched to explore the bulk of the remaining theoretically favoured electroweak phase space towards galactic Dark Matter discovery.





Professor Chris Collins
Astrophysics Research Institute
Liverpool John Moores University
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