[ad_1]
• Physics 16, s106
Two mammoth underground detectors have delivered extra stringent higher limits on how strongly a putative darkish matter candidate interacts with regular matter.
Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory
Among the many hypothetical particles proposed to clarify darkish matter are weakly interacting huge particles (WIMPs). In response to fashions, WIMPs and their antiparticles fell out of thermal equilibrium quickly after the large bang and ceased being spontaneously produced. The fraction that survived self-annihilation lived on. Two groups, LUX ZEPLIN and XENONnT, have simply reported the primary outcomes of their searches for WIMPs whose plenty exceed the proton’s by an element of 10 and extra, a spread that’s in keeping with fashions of cosmic evolution [1, 2]. Neither group recorded a detection. Nevertheless, their constraints of their overlapping mass ranges are probably the most stringent but.
The LUX ZEPLIN and XENONnT experiments each encompass a number of tons of liquid xenon contained in a tank and monitored by two arrays of photomultiplier tubes. These arrays document the attribute double gentle flash of WIMPs hanging xenon atoms. The ratio of the 2 flashes can be totally different for cosmic rays, muons, or different background particles. To scale back background charges, LUX ZEPLIN and XENONnT are situated in deep underground caverns.
WIMPs are available a number of varieties arising from the theories that begat them. The brand new limits from LUX ZEPLIN and XENONnT don’t remove any of the favored varieties. Nevertheless, the 2 experiments have years extra to run. Already, the higher restrict on the WIMP–nucleon interplay cross part is one tenth that of the neutrino–nucleon equal.
–Charles Day
Charles Day is a Senior Editor for Physics Journal.
References
- E. Aprile et al. (XENON Collaboration), “First darkish matter search with nuclear recoils from the XENONnT experiment,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 041003 (2023).
- J. Aalbers et al. (LUX-ZEPLIN Collaboration), “First darkish matter search outcomes from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 041002 (2023).
Topic Areas
[ad_2]