Dark Matter, Coherent Scatter and Dual Phase Detectors

Adam Bernstein

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Abstract:

Thanks to their attractive scaling properties and remarkable discrimination power, Dual Phase Detectors have demonstrated highly competitive performance in the global search for weakly Interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. I will describe the XENON10 10 kg dual phase detector, and present a stringent limit placed on WIMP dark matter using this device. In addition, I will discuss work by the newly formed LUX (Large Underground Xenon) detector collaboration on a 300 kg dual phase xenon detector. I will also discuss efforts at LLNL to achieve a first ever measurement of a closely related phenomenon, neutrino-nucleus scattering using dual phase argon detectors. The XENON10 results have just been published in J. Angle et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 021303 (2008).