3–7 Dec 2012
IST Congress Center
Europe/Lisbon timezone
<big>NEWS: Deadline for Proceedings - 28 February 2013 </big>

The LUX Experiment: Status and Future Plans

4 Dec 2012, 18:40
25m
Room 2 (IST Congress Center)

Room 2

IST Congress Center

Speaker

Francisco Neves (L)

Description

LUX (Large Underground Xenon) is a dark matter detection experiment using a 350 kg dual-phase Xe TPC. It will surpass all existing dark matter limits for WIMP masses above 10 GeV within weeks of beginning its science run, and its goal is to reach a WIMP-nucleon cross-section sensitivity of 2e-46 cm^2 for a 40 GeV WIMP after 300 days of running (an order of magnitude lower than the current best limit). LUX was already tested during a surface run in the Sanford Lab at Homestake, with all subsystems in their final configuration. This marked the first successful use of technologies proposed for tonne-scale detectors, such as a water tank for shielding and thermosyphon cooling. During this surface run the detector was calibrated using radioactive sources, showing an excellent light collection and demonstrating the potential for a very low (~1 keV) energy threshold. LUX is currently installed in the Sanford underground laboratory, and close to starting its first science run. Plans for the LZ experiment, the next generation detector with a mass of 7 tonnes, will also be discussed in this talk.

Primary author

Francisco Neves (L)

Presentation materials