Results from XENON100 and Prospects for Direct Detection of Dark Matter

Guillaume Plante
(Columbia University)


The XENON100 experiment, installed underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, aims at detecting dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) scattering off nuclei within its 62 kg liquid xenon (LXe) target by simultaneously measuring the scintillation and ionization signals produced by nuclear recoils. These two signals allow the three-dimensional localization of events with millimeter precision and the ability to fiducialize the target volume, yielding an inner core with a very low background. In this talk, I will present the recent XENON100 results obtained from 225 live days of data acquired in 2011-2012 and briefly discuss past, as well as ongoing, dedicated measurements performed to understand the response of LXe to low-energy nuclear and electronic recoils. Finally, I will talk about the next phase in the XENON program, the XENON1T experiment, currently under construction, and with an expected sensitivity to WIMP-nucleon interactions nearly 2 orders of magnitude better than XENON100