Colloquium - Kimberly Palladino (University of Wisconsin) - Deep, Dark, and Elusive: LUX and Direct Dark Matter Searches

Kimberly Palladino
March 29, 2016
4:00PM - 5:00PM
1080 Physics Research Building - Smith Seminar Room - Smith Seminar Room - reception at 3:45pm in the Atrium

Date Range
2016-03-29 16:00:00 2016-03-29 17:00:00 Colloquium - Kimberly Palladino (University of Wisconsin) - Deep, Dark, and Elusive: LUX and Direct Dark Matter Searches Astrophysical evidence indicates that dark matter is five times more abundant that the normal matter that we interact with daily. A candidate for dark matter is the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) which we attempt to see via its rare interactions with a target material in the laboratory. Liquid xenon time projection chambers have proved a robust technology for rare event searches, and the LUX experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, SD has updated its sensitivity to spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interactions to have world-leading limits. LUX will not be the final word in dark matter searches, and a number of direct detection experiments will be turning on in the coming years that will cover significant WIMP mass ranges and interaction cross-sections. 1080 Physics Research Building - Smith Seminar Room - Smith Seminar Room - reception at 3:45pm in the Atrium America/New_York public

Astrophysical evidence indicates that dark matter is five times more abundant that the normal matter that we interact with daily. A candidate for dark matter is the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) which we attempt to see via its rare interactions with a target material in the laboratory. Liquid xenon time projection chambers have proved a robust technology for rare event searches, and the LUX experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, SD has updated its sensitivity to spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interactions to have world-leading limits. LUX will not be the final word in dark matter searches, and a number of direct detection experiments will be turning on in the coming years that will cover significant WIMP mass ranges and interaction cross-sections.