Trobada: Dark Matter Direct Searches

por Prof. José Matías-Lopes (Universidade de Coimbra)

viernes 22 ene. 2016 12:00 → 13:00 Europe/Madrid

1001-Primera-1-1-1 - Paterna. Seminario (Universe)

The most important open question in cosmology is the nature of Dark Matter (DM): strong experimental evidences support the presence of this elusive component in the energy budget of the Universe, without, however, being able to provide conclusive results about its nature. The widest accepted class of models assumes that DM is composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). With the Earth travelling throughout a galactic halo formed by such particles, it is expected that they directly interact with large-volume detectors, especially set-up for this purpose. In the recent years, a number of such detectors (XENON, LUX, CDMS, etc.) have searched for WIMPs with negative results. In this talk, the status of the direct DM searches will be presented, focusing on the leading effort of the XENON phased program. The XENON100 experiment for DM search is located in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in central Italy. After delivering cutting edge results for 6 years, this detector is now serving as a test‐bench to prove all the technologies for the recently inaugurated XENON1T detector, with a 20 fold larger volume, which will drastically improve the direct DM searches sensitivity with a realistic discovery potential.