A sparkle in the dark: data intensive searches for Dark Matter with LUX-ZEPLIN
Dr. Maria Elena Monzani
Lead Scientist, LUX-ZEPLIN Dark Matter Experiment
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
The nature and origin of dark matter are among the most compelling mysteries of contemporary science. There is strong evidence for dark matter from its role in shaping the galaxies and galaxy clusters that we observe in the universe. Still, physicists have tried to detect dark matter particles for over three decades with little success.
This talk will describe the leading effort in that search, the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. LZ is an instrument that is superlative in many ways. It consists of 10 tons of liquified xenon gas, maintained at almost atomic purity and stored in a refrigerated titanium cylinder a mile underground in a former gold mine in Lead, South Dakota. In 2022, the LZ collaboration released its initial dark matter search results, achieving world-leading sensitivities to a wide range of potential dark matter candidates.
LZ is projected to accumulate a massive dataset of many petabytes of data and record several billions of particle interactions, only a handful of which might be produced by dark matter interactions. Identifying such interactions requires leveraging advanced detector design and state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. The talk will present the challenges in constructing this large-scale underground experiment and interpreting its data, along with the prospects LZ presents for finally discovering the dark matter particle.