Northwestern Events Calendar

Nov
16
2016

Dylan Temples and Peter Lee

When: Wednesday, November 16, 2016
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: Technological Institute, F160, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Cost: Pizza provided

Contact: Bud Robinson   (847) 491-3644

Group: Physics and Astronomy PAECRS

Category: Academic

Description:

"Direct Detection of Dark Matter with the LZ Experiment"

Dylan Temples

The existence of dark matter is implied by astrophysical and cosmological studies but to date no experiments have been able to directly detect dark matter particles. The current best limits on the spin-independent cross-section of WIMP dark matter have been set by the LUX experiment, the predecessor to the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. The LZ experiment uses a 10-tonne two-phase time projection chamber to detect nuclear recoils of xenon atoms from elastic scattering of WIMPs. Using the technology developed in LUX, and increased active volume, the LZ experiment expects to achieve an increase in sensitivity of nearly three orders of magnitude in the WIMP cross-section. In this talk, I will discuss the theory of direct detection in a liquid noble detector, the design of the LZ detector, and the challenges of discriminating a WIMP signal from the radiation background.

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