The XENON Dark Matter Search
- Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 (United States)
The XENON experiment will search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS), a leading candidate for the dark matter content of the Universe. The XENON detector uses the simultaneous measurement of ionization and scintillation in liquid xenon to distinguish between nuclear recoils and background electronic interactions. Ionization electrons are extracted into the xenon vapor where they produce a large proportional scintillation signal in a grid assembly. Both prompt and proportional scintillation light are detected by PMT arrays on the top and bottom of the active liquid xenon volume. The distribution of proportional scintillation light in the top PMT array can be used to achieve xy position resolution, while the ionization drift time gives position resolution in the z direction. This allows the definition of a low-background fiducial volume. I describe the results of the R and D phase of this project before providing a status update on the XENON10 phase.
- OSTI ID:
- 20894981
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 870, Issue 1; Conference: CIPAN2006: 9. conference on intersections of particle and nuclear physics, Rio Grande (Puerto Rico), 30 May - 3 Jun 2006; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2402617; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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