Wednesday 3 October 2012 

Speaker: Richard Gaitskell (Brown University)


Title: "LUX and LZ (LUX-ZEPLIN) : Large Liquid Xe Detectors Searching 
for Particle Dark Matter"

Abstract: "Particle dark matter is thought to be the overwhelming majority of 
the matter in the Universe. Its gravitational contribution overwhelms that 
from the ordinary matter that we, the earth and the stars, are composed of. 
However, we still have no convincing direct evidence for the existence of 
particle dark matter. This may soon change... I will discuss the LUX Experiment 
which has recently been installed underground at the Sanford Lab, Homestake, SD. 
The experiment will shortly begin operations. LUX is a 350 kg liquid Xe time 
projection chamber. It is projected that in the first two weeks of running LUX 
will exceed the sensitivity of the results of all previous direct detection experiments.

I will also review some of the other current dark matter results, and future noble 
liquid experiments. This will include the 7 tonne liquid Xe LZ (LUX-ZEPLIN) which 
is proposed to be constructed at Sanford Lab in 2015, and will improve dark matter 
sensitivity by a further factor of 100.

[ http://luxdarkmatter.org ]
[ http://particleastro.brown.edu ]".