Speaker
Blair Edwards
(STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
Description
We present the results from the first science run of the ZEPLIN-III WIMP dark matter search. ZEPLIN-III utilises two-phase xenon, measuring both scintillation and ionisation produced by interactions in the liquid to differentiate between the nuclear recoils expected from WIMPs and the electron recoil background signals down to ∼10keV nuclear recoil energy. The higher-field operation of the instrument provides enhanced discrimination over previous two-phase xenon experiments. The first science run of ZEPLIN-III at the Palmer Underground Laboratory (Boulby mine, UK), acquired 847 kg.days of background data, with a final fiducial exposure of 266 kg.days, placing a 90% confidence upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent scattering cross-section with a minimum at 7.7E-08 pb at a WIMP mass of 55 GeV/c2.
Primary author
Blair Edwards
(STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
