Results from XENON1T, the world's largest and most sensitive detector dedicated to a direct search for Dark Matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), are reported today (Monday, 28th May) by the spokesperson, Prof. Elena Aprile of Columbia University, in a seminar at the hosting laboratory, the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), in Italy. The international collaboration of more than 165 researchers from 27 institutions, has successfully operated XENON1T, collecting an unprecedentedly large exposure of about 1 tonne x year with a 3D imaging liquid xenon time projection chamber. The data are consistent with the expectation from background, and place the most stringent limit on spin-independent interactions of WIMPs with ordinary matter for a WIMP mass higher than 6 GeV/c². The sensitivity achieved with XENON1T is almost four orders of magnitude better than that of XENON10, the first detector of the XENON Dark Matter project, which has been hosted at LNGS since 2005. Steadily increasing the fiducial target mass from the initial 5 kg to the current 1300 kg, while simultaneously decreasing the background rate by a factor 5000, the XENON collaboration has continued to be at the forefront of Dark Matter direct detection, probing deeper into the WIMP parameter space.

Shown are the limits on WIMP interactions, derived from one year of XENON1T data. The inset compares our limit and sensitivity with the limit and sensitivities of previous experiments.

WIMPs are a class of Dark Matter candidates which are being frantically searched with experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, in space, and on Earth. Even though about a billion WIMPs are expected to cross a surface of one square meter per second on Earth, they are extremely difficult to detect. Results from XENON1T show that WIMPs, if they indeed comprise the Dark Matter in our galaxy, will result in a rare signal, so rare that even the largest detector built so far can not see it directly. XENON1T is a cylindrical detector of approximately one meter height and diameter, filled with liquid xenon at -95°C, with a density three times that of water. In XENON1T, the signature of a WIMP interaction with xenon atoms is a tiny flash of scintillation light and a handful of ionization electrons, which themselves are turned into flashes of light. Both light signals are simultaneously recorded with ultra-sensitive photodetectors, giving the energy and 3D spatial information on an event-by-event basis.

In developing this unique type of detector to search for a rare WIMP signal, many challenges had to be overcome; first and foremost the reduction of the overwhelmingly large background from many sources, from radioactivity to cosmic rays. Today, XENON1T is the largest Dark Matter experiment with the lowest background ever measured, counting a mere 630 events in one year and one tonne of xenon in the energy region of interest for a WIMP search. The search results, submitted to Physical Review Letters, are based on 1300 kg out of the total 2000 kg active xenon target and 279 days of data, making it the first WIMP search with a noble liquid target exposure of 1.0 tonne x year. Only two background events were expected in the innermost, cleanest region of the detector, but none were detected, setting the most stringent limit on WIMPs with masses above 6 GeV/c² to date. XENON1T continues to acquire high quality data and the search will continue until it will be upgraded with a larger mass detector, being developed by the collaboration. With another factor of four increase in fiducial target mass, and ten times less background rate, XENONnT will be ready in 2019 for a new exploration of particle Dark Matter at a level of sensitivity nobody imagined when the project started in 2002.

The spring meeting of the german physics society took place from 19th to 23rd March in Würzburg, a very historic city with its baroque Residence from 1744 that belongs to the UNESCO world heritage. The meeting is a yearly get-together of physicists working in german institutions and provides the opportunity to exchange and learn about new projects and results within the particle physics community. The conference program can be found here.

During my presentation of the XENON1T experiment, I tried to share my excitement about the upcoming results from the new data set of our second science run (SR1) that was acquired during the course of last year within 247 live days. Here is one slide showing the collected data in the S2 vs. S1 space on the right:

For comparison, the data from the first science run (SR0) that was ended by an earthquake is shown in the left figure. Already with SR0 which was a factor of 8 shorter than SR1 we could set the most stringent limit on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-sections and prove a detector background level that makes XENON1T the most sensitive experiment worldwide. Hence, we are eager to unblind the signal region (marked by the blue band) in the new data set after some final checks of the analysis and find out if we actually measured a few WIMP events. We would be able to see a 3 sigma excess of a signal with a cross section just below the upper limit of SR0 with more than 50% probability. So maybe the discovery of dark matter is just around the corner?

Last week I had the opportunity to present the XENON1T experiment at the Recontres de Moriond electroweak conference in La Thuile Italy in the beautiful Aosta Valley. This meeting is one of the most important meetings for LHC physics, but has slowly expanded to encapsulate a variety of topics, including the hunt for dark matter. The conference program and slides are available on indico. The XENON1T presentation focused on our dark matter search results from last spring as well as the upcoming result using about a factor of 10 more exposure, which is under intense preparation for release. The whole presentation is available from the indico page but here is one slide from it:

Here we discuss how we were able to increase the amount of liquid xenon we use for our dark matter search from ~1000kg to ~1300kg. The top left plot shows an example larger search volume (red) compared to the smaller volume used for the first result. But it's not so simple as just adding volume. While our inner detector is completely free of WIMP-like background, the outer radii contain background components that can mimic WIMPs. This is illustrated in the bottom right plot where the background-free inner volume (right) is contrasted with the full search volume containing the outer radial sections (left). The full volume has a contribution from PTFE (Teflon) surface background (green contour and points) that is absent as soon as we consider only the inner volume.

Our statistical interpretation has been updated so it is smart enough to take this into account. We parameterize our entire search region in both radial and spatial dimensions with expected signal and background distributions described at each location. This allows us to fully exploit the sensitivity of our innermost background-free volumes while also gaining a modest improvement from the outermost ones.

On Tuesday 20th of June, we presented our latest results on Electronic Recoil Modulations with 4 years of Xenon100 data at the PASCOS 2017 conference held in Madrid. After a short introduction, by M.L. Benabderrahmane, to the dark matter modulation as a signal, the main results have been presented, namely the test statistics of unbinned profile likelihood to search for the modulation period using three different sets of data. The first set contains the single scatter events in the energy range 2-5.8keV, the second set contains Multiple scatter events in the same energy range and the last one contains single scatters in the energy range 6-20keV. The last two samples are used as a sideband. The results of the likelihood gives a period of 431 days which is different from the one observed by the DAMA/LIBRA collaboration. Our single scatter modulation at 431 days has a global significance below 2sigma. The local test statistics for one year period gives a 1.8sigma. Similarity of the spectra between the two control samples and the signal sample disfavors the possibility for a modulation due to Dark Matter interaction.

The traditional approach for WIMP nucleus interaction studies in direct detection experiment is to consider just two types of interactions, the spin independent (SI) and the spin dependent (SD) ones. However, these are not the only types of interactions possible. In recent years, a non-relativistic effective field theory approach has been studied. In this framework, 14 new interaction operators arise. These operators include the SI and SD ones among others. Some of these new operators are momentum dependent and predict a non-exponential event rate as function of energy, in contrast to the traditional expected signals. Moreover, some of these operators predict energy recoils above the upper threshold of the standard analyses done in direct detection experiments. For XENON100, this threshold is 43keV (nuclear recoil).

In this analysis, we extend the upper energy threshold up to ~240 keV. This value is dictated by low statistics in calibration data above it. We divide our signal region into two regimes, low recoil energy, on which we perform the same "standard" analysis done for the SI and SD cases, and high recoil energy, which is the main focus of this work.

Summary of regions of interest, backgrounds, and observed data. ER calibration data, namely 60Co and 232Th data, is shown as light cyan dots. NR calibration data (241AmBe) is shown as light red dots. Dark matter search data is shown as black dots. The red line is the threshold between the low and high energy channels. The lines in blue are the bands. For the low energy channel these are operator and mass dependent, but are shown here for a 50 GeV/c^2 WIMP using the O1 operator. For the high-energy region, the nine analysis bins are presented also in blue lines.

We find that our data is compatible with background expectations. Using a binned profile likelihood, we thus produce 90% CL exclusion limits for both elastic scattering and inelastic WIMP scattering for each operator. Find the preprint of this study on the arxiv.

The XENON100 limits (90% CLS) on isoscalar dimensionless coupling for all elastic scattering EFT operators. The
limits are indicated in solid black. The expected sensitivity is shown in green and yellow (1σ and 2σ respectively). Limits from CDMS-II Si, CDMS-II Ge, and SuperCDMS [30] are presented as blue asterisks, green triangles, and orange rectangles, respectively.

The first results from the XENON1T experiment were presented at the 29th Rencontres de Blois by Dr. Alexander Kish, researcher from the University of Zurich. The slides from the well-received presentation which highlighted the conference can be found here.

On Tuesday, May 30, we presented the first XENON1T results in a seminar at LNGS, the laboratory where our experiment is hosted. The seminar was presented by Marco Selvi (INFN Bologna) in the Fermi room, the main auditorium at LNGS, and introduced by the LNGS director prof. Stefano Ragazzi in front of about 40 scientists.

After a short introduction on Dark Matter (you may guess that at LNGS they are well aware of the details of this physics puzzle! ), we described the construction and commissioning phase of the various systems crucial to run our detector.

We then focused mainly on the performances of XENON1T in the first science run,
where we reached the lowest ER background ever achieved in a dark matter experiment.

Also our sensitivity is very good, being it also the best out of the various direct search dark matter experiment, even with just 34 days of data acquisition.

With our result, XENON1T (and LNGS with) is back at the frontline of the race to finally detect dark matter particles … we look forward to analyse the already acquired >70 days of data !

[Press Release May 2017 – for immediate release. Preprint is on the arxiv]

"The best result on dark matter so far! … and we just got started!".

This is how scientists behind XENON1T, now the most sensitive dark matter experiment world-wide, hosted in the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, commented on their first result from a short 30-day run presented today to the scientific community.

XENON1T at LNGS

XENON1T installation in the underground hall of Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. The three story building on the right houses various auxiliary systems. The cryostat containing the LXeTPC is located inside the large water tank on th left, next to the building. (Photo by Roberto Corrieri and Patrick De Perio)

Dark matter is one of the basic constituents of the Universe, five times more abundant than ordinary matter. Several astronomical measurements have corroborated the existence of dark matter, leading to a world-wide effort to observe directly dark matter particle interactions with ordinary matter in extremely sensitive detectors, which would confirm its existence and shed light on its properties. However, these interactions are so feeble that they have escaped direct detection up to this point, forcing scientists to build detectors that are more and more sensitive. The XENON Collaboration, that with the XENON100 detector led the field for years in the past, is now back on the frontline with the XENON1T experiment. The result from a first short 30-day run shows that this detector has a new record low radioactivity level, many orders of magnitude below surrounding materials on Earth. With a total mass of about 3200kg, XENON1T is at the same time the largest detector of this type ever built. The combination of significantly increased size with much lower background implies an excellent dark matter discovery potential in the years to come.

The XENON1T TPC

Scientists assembling the XENON1T time projection chamber. (Photo by Enrico Sacchetti)

The XENON Collaboration consists of 135 researchers from the US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. The latest detector of the XENON family has been in science operation at the LNGS underground laboratory since autumn 2016. The only things you see when visiting the underground experimental site now are a gigantic cylindrical metal tank, filled with ultra-pure water to shield the detector at his center, and a three-story-tall, transparent building crowded with equipment to keep the detector running, with physicists from all over the world. The XENON1T central detector, a so-called Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chamber (LXeTPC), is not visible. It sits within a cryostat in the middle of the water tank, fully submersed, in order to shield it as much as possible from natural radioactivity in the cavern. The cryostat allows keeping the xenon at a temperature of -95°C without freezing the surrounding water. The mountain above the laboratory further shields the detector, preventing it to be perturbed by cosmic rays. But shielding from the outer world is not enough since all materials on Earth contain tiny traces of natural radioactivity. Thus extreme care was taken to find, select and process the materials making up the detector to achieve the lowest possible radioactive content. Laura Baudis, professor at the University of Zürich and professor Manfred Lindner from the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg emphasize that this allowed XENON1T to achieve record "silence", which is necessary to listen with a larger detector much better for the very weak voice of dark matter.

XENON1T first results limit

The spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section
limits as a function of WIMP mass at 90% confidence
level (black) for this run of XENON1T. In green and yellow
are the 1- and 2σ sensitivity bands. Results from LUX
(red), PandaX-II (brown), and XENON100 (gray)
are shown for reference.

A particle interaction in liquid xenon leads to tiny flashes of light. This is what the XENON scientists are recording and studying to infer the position and the energy of the interacting particle and whether it might be dark matter or not. The spatial information allows to select interactions occurring in the central 1 ton core of the detector. The surrounding xenon further shields the core xenon target from all materials which already have tiny surviving radioactive contaminants. Despite the shortness of the 30-day science run the sensitivity of XENON1T has already overcome that of any other experiment in the field, probing un-explored dark matter territory."WIMPs did not show up in this first search with XENON1T, but we also did not expect them so soon!" says Elena Aprile, Professor at Columbia University and spokesperson of the project. "The best news is that the experiment continues to accumulate excellent data which will allow us to test quite soon the WIMP hypothesis in a region of mass and cross-section with normal atoms as never before. A new phase in the race to detect dark matter with ultra-low background massive detectors on Earth has just began with XENON1T. We are proud to be at the forefront of the race with this amazing detector, the first of its kind."

As always, feel free to contact the XENON collaboration at contact@xenon1t.org.

Search for magnetic inelastic dark matter with XENON100

There is the long-standing claim of the DAMA/LIBRA collaboration about a detection of dark matter via the highly significant observation of an annually modulating signal in radiopure sodium iodide crystals. This signal, however, is in conflict with exclusion limits from various other dark matter experiments, including XENON100. Several alternatives to the classical WIMP scenario have thus been proposed in order to reconcile these null results with DAMA/LIBRA. One of these models is magnetic inelastic dark matter (MiDM). The MiDM model is motivated by comparing certain properties of the different detector targets and how they possibly influence the expected event rates. Iodine, used in DAMA/LIBRA, is distinguished by its high atomic mass and high nuclear magnetic moment. This enhances the signal of MiDM compared to other targets, such as xenon, and opens up new parameter space for the DAMA/LIBRA signal that is not in conflict with other null results.

The exclusion limit (at 90% confidence level, CL) on MiDM interactions from of XENON100 for a dark matter mass of m=123GeV/c2. Also shown are the 68% and 95% (green) CL regions of the MiDM best fit to the DAMA/LIBRA modulation signal. The limit from COUPP data is shown as well.

In the framework of MiDM the dark matter particle is expected to scatter inelastically off the nucleus, thereby gets excited, and de-excites after a lifetime of the order of order μs with the emission of a photon with an energy of δ~100 keV. Given the mean velocity of the dark matter particle, it travels a distance of O(m) before it de-excites. Furthermore it is assumed that the dark matter particle has a non-zero magnetic moment, μχ. The combination of a low-energy nuclear recoil followed by  an electronic recoil from the de-excitation creates a unique delayed coincidence signature which has been searched for the first time using the XENON100 science run II dataset with a total exposure of 10.8 ton × days. No MiDM candidate event has been found, thus we calculate an upper limit on the interaction strength. The Figure shows the resulting limit for a dark matter mass of 123 GeV/c2 which completely excludes the DAMA/LIBRA modulation signal as being due to MiDM.The sensitivity of this type of analysis will be greatly improved for current ton-scale (e.g., XENON1T) and future multi-ton dual-phase LXe TPCs (e.g., XENONnT, LZ and DARWIN). This is not only due to the increased target mass, but also thanks to the higher probability of detecting the de-excitation inside the larger active volume.

E. Aprile et al. (XENON Collaboration), Exclusion of Leptophilic Dark Matter Models using XENON100 Electronic Recoil Data, Science 2015 vol. 349 no. 6250 pp. 851, and Search for Event Rate Modulation in XENON100 Electronic Recoil Data, Physical Review Letters 115, 091302 (2015) and arxiv.1507.07748

The annual modulation signature

Although we believe that Dark Matter is Out There, we are completely oblivious to the impact of Dark Matter on our daily lives. On the human scale Dark Matter is nearly impossible to detect, the faintest whisper of the galaxy. The vast majority of the time Dark Matter particles pass right through us as if we don't exist.

It is hypothesized, however, that we may be able to tune our ears to hear the unique song of Dark Matter here on Earth. Doing so successfully would constitute direct proof that Dark Matter exists.

Rather than the swelling symphony that you might expect from the most abundant matter in the Universe, this song will be a random melody, plucked out in individual notes. The tempo of these notes, that is the rate of events in a Dark Matter detector, should vary over the course of one year.

Evidence suggests that both the Sun and the Earth are enveloped by the Dark Matter halo of the Milky Way. As the Earth's velocity relative to the Sun varies over its one-year orbit, so does it's velocity relative to the Dark Matter. This should result in the so-called "WIMP wind" that blows harder in June, and softer in December.

This variation itself becomes the song of Dark Matter, repeating every year like clockwork – the annual modulation signature.

Illustration of the expected

Illustration of the expected "WIMP wind" due to the motion of the Sun relative to the DM halo of the Milky Way. Figure from arXiv:1209.3339

XENON100 was the first instrument using liquified xenon that was able to search for such a signature. The liquid xenon that fills the detector emits light when particles interact with it. We take pictures of the light with extremely sensitive devices, and use them to identify the energy and type of interaction. We took data with this detector from February 2011 to March 2012, long enough to observe more than one full cycle of the Dark Matter annual modulation.

What will Dark Matter events look like?

In XENON100, more than one type of event is identifiable. The type depends on whether Dark Matter interacts with the nuclei of the atoms in the detector, or with the electrons surrounding these nuclei. Typically, we assume the interactions of Dark Matter are with the nuclei.

For our newest study, we considered the possibility that Dark Matter instead interacts with the electrons in XENON100, and looked for an annual modulation signature.

One challenge of such a study is that many things can potentially make the rate of events in the detector vary in time, for example random noise in the instrument itself or the decay of radioactive particles. We examined all these possibilities carefully, and determined to what extent they might affect the rate of events in the detector.

The results of our study show some evidence for a rate of events varying periodically over the course of roughly one year, or perhaps longer. This slight change in rate – about half of the average rate in the detector, which is itself very small – can not yet be explained. There's a one in a thousand chance that it is just a statistical fluke.

Before you go extolling the news from the rooftops, however, take note that our observation is not what we would naively expect from Dark Matter.

Our data shows that the rate of multiple-scatter events (interactions with more than one atom) varies almost as much as that of single-scatter events. Since Dark Matter interacts extremely rarely, we would never expect it to cause multiple-scatter events. In addition, the date of the peak rate in our detector does not match up with what we expect due to the motion of the Earth through the Dark Matter halo.

New perspective on an old claim of Dark Matter discovery

The DAMA/LIBRA collaboration has observed an annual modulation signal in their NaI detectors for more than a decade. They claim that it can be interpreted as a direct detection of Dark Matter. Meanwhile, many experiments that are more sensitive than DAMA/LIBRA (including XENON100) have found no comparable evidence of Dark Matter interacting with atomic nuclei.

However, given the fact that the NaI detectors are unable to differentiate between different types of events, one way to resolve this tension between the different experiments is if the interactions in DAMA/LIBRA are with the electrons.

Although our study shows that XENON100 sees some hint of a signal varying over long periods, the size of that signal is still much smaller than what we would expect to see if we were, in fact, detecting the same signal as DAMA/LIBRA. Thus, we find that it is extremely unlikely to be the case that DAMA/LIBRA observes an annual modulation due to interactions with electrons. The data from XENON100 exclude this possibility with a statistical significance of 4.8σ, corresponding to a probability of about one in a million.

Best-fit amplitude and phase of annual modulation signal in XENON100 from a profile likelihood study. Expected signal from DAMA/LIBRA and expected phase from the standard Dark Matter halo overlaid for comparison.

Best-fit amplitude and phase of annual modulation signal in XENON100 from a profile likelihood study. Expected signal from DAMA/LIBRA and expected phase from the standard Dark Matter halo overlaid for comparison.

Our study answers an important question about how to interpret the DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation signal, but raises many more. Why haven't we discovered the annual modulation of Dark Matter? What causes the annual modulation in DAMA/LIBRA? What causes the slight variation of rate in XENON100?

More data has since been taken by XENON100 that will hopefully allow the last question to be answered. As to the nature of Dark Matter, well, we will have to keep listening.