skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Technical results from the surface run of the LUX dark matter experiment

Journal Article · · Astroparticle Physics
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [5];  [3];  [1];  [6];  [1];  [7];  [1];  [8];  [3];  [6];  [6];  [6];  [1];  [9];  [7] more »;  [2];  [9];  [9];  [3];  [4];  [7];  [3];  [1];  [10];  [11];  [11];  [3];  [6];  [12];  [3];  [5];  [13];  [8];  [14];  [15];  [11];  [3];  [6];  [1];  [1];  [12];  [1];  [11];  [8];  [11];  [4];  [12];  [13];  [13];  [9];  [13];  [13];  [6];  [11];  [13];  [12];  [12];  [14];  [8];  [13];  [5] « less
  1. Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH (United States). Dept. of Physics
  2. South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD (United States)
  3. Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (United States). Dept. of Physics
  4. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  5. Univ. of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD (United States). Dept. of Physics
  6. Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States). Dept. of Physics
  7. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Dept. of Physics
  8. Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  9. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  10. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  11. Univ. of Coimbra, Rua Larga, Coimbra (Portugal). LIP-Coimbra, Dept. of Physics
  12. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States). Dept. of Physics
  13. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  14. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  15. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics
+ Show Author Affiliations

We present the results of the three-month above-ground commissioning run of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility located in Lead, South Dakota, USA. LUX is a 370 kg liquid xenon detector that will search for cold dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The commissioning run, conducted with the detector immersed in a water tank, validated the integration of the various sub-systems in preparation for the underground deployment. Using the data collected, we report excellent light collection properties, achieving 8.4 photoelectrons per keV for 662 keV electron recoils without an applied electric field, measured in the center of the WIMP target. We also find good energy and position resolution in relatively high-energy interactions from a variety of internal and external sources. Finally, we have used the commissioning data to tune the optical properties of our simulation and report updated sensitivity projections for spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering.

Research Organization:
University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Contributing Organization:
Nuclear Science & Security Consortium (NNSC)
Grant/Contract Number:
NA0000979; FG02-08ER41549; FG02-91ER40688; FG02-95ER40917; FG02-91ER40674; FG02-11ER41738; FG02-11ER41751; AC52-07NA27344; PHY-0750671; PHY-0801536; PHY-1004661; PHY-1102470; PHY-1003660; RA0350; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1454541
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1511361
Journal Information:
Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 45, Issue C; ISSN 0927-6505
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 38 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (29)

Detectability of certain dark-matter candidates journal June 1985
Status of the LUX Dark Matter Search
  • Fiorucci, S.; Akerib, D. S.; Bedikian, S.
  • SUSY09: 7th International Conference on Supersymmetry and the Unification of Fundamental Interactions, AIP Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3327777
conference January 2010
The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment
  • Akerib, D. S.; Bai, X.; Bedikian, S.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 704 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2012.11.135
journal March 2013
Scintillation response of liquid Xe surrounded by PTFE reflector for gamma rays
  • Yamashita, M.; Doke, T.; Kawasaki, K.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 535, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2004.06.168
journal December 2004
Study of a zirconium getter for purification of xenon gas
  • Dobi, A.; Leonard, D. S.; Hall, C.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 620, Issue 2-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2010.03.151
journal August 2010
A simple high-sensitivity technique for purity analysis of xenon gas
  • Leonard, D. S.; Dobi, A.; Hall, L. J. Kaufman, C.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 621, Issue 1-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2010.04.152
journal September 2010
Data acquisition and readout system for the LUX dark matter experiment
  • Akerib, D. S.; Bai, X.; Bedikian, S.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 668 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2011.11.063
journal March 2012
Muon-induced background study for underground laboratories journal March 2006
Evidence for a triplet state of the self-trapped exciton states in liquid argon, krypton and xenon journal June 1978
Dynamical behavior of free electrons in the recombination process in liquid argon, krypton, and xenon journal October 1979
Review of Particle Physics journal July 2012
The XENON100 dark matter experiment journal April 2012
Position Reconstruction in a Dual Phase Xenon Scintillation Detector journal December 2012
Geant4—a simulation toolkit
  • Agostinelli, S.; Allison, J.; Amako, K.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 506, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-9002(03)01368-8
journal July 2003
LUXSim: A component-centric approach to low-background simulations
  • Akerib, D. S.; Bai, X.; Bedikian, S.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 675 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2012.02.010
journal May 2012
NEST: a comprehensive model for scintillation yield in liquid xenon journal October 2011
Nuclear Data Sheets for A = 214 journal September 1995
Search for an Annual Modulation in a p -Type Point Contact Germanium Dark Matter Detector journal September 2011
Scintillation efficiency and ionization yield of liquid xenon for monoenergetic nuclear recoils down to 4 keV journal February 2010
New measurement of the scintillation efficiency of low-energy nuclear recoils in liquid xenon journal October 2011
Nuclear recoil scintillation and ionisation yields in liquid xenon from ZEPLIN-III data journal November 2011
Dark Matter Search Results from the CDMS II Experiment journal March 2010
Final results of the EDELWEISS-II WIMP search using a 4-kg array of cryogenic germanium detectors with interleaved electrodes journal August 2011
WIMP-nucleon cross-section results from the second science run of ZEPLIN-III journal March 2012
Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data journal November 2012
Cryogenics for the LUX Detector journal August 2009
Search for an Annual Modulation in a p -Type Point Contact Germanium Dark Matter Detector text January 2011
Final results of the EDELWEISS-II WIMP search using a 4-kg array of cryogenic germanium detectors with interleaved electrodes text January 2011
Muon-Induced Background Study for Underground Laboratories text January 2005

Cited By (7)

Liquid noble gases for dark matter searches: An updated survey journal September 2015
DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector journal November 2016
Dark compact objects: An extensive overview journal March 2019
DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector text January 2016
Liquid noble gas detectors for low energy particle physics text January 2012
Results from a search for dark matter in the complete LUX exposure text January 2016
Calibration, event reconstruction, data analysis and limits calculation for the LUX dark matter experiment text January 2017

Similar Records

Results from a search for dark matter in the complete LUX exposure
Journal Article · Wed Jan 11 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Physical Review Letters · OSTI ID:1454541
+98 more
Liquid xenon scintillation measurements and pulse shape discrimination in the LUX dark matter detector
Journal Article · Mon Jun 11 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Physical Review D · OSTI ID:1454541
+89 more
LUX trigger efficiency
Journal Article · Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment · OSTI ID:1454541
+94 more

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Liquid xenon detectors
Dark matter
WIMP
Direct detection