2022-01-14 11:00  Online

Hunting for the Invisible Deep Underground

Jui-Jen Ryan Wang

In the past decades, physicists have been working deep underground to solve the mystery of the universe. The “invisible matter” which can penetrate through almost everything constitutes 27 % of the energy content of the Universe. This strange and unknown matter called “dark matter” (DM), has been confirmed by astrophysical and cosmological evidence. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the nature of dark matter, among those, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are the most promising candidate. Physicists have been utilizing different techniques to detect dark matter. Among those techniques, liquid noble gases have been extensively used for direct dark matter searches and neutrino physics. In this talk, I will introduce the evidence of dark matter and different techniques being used, summarizing the techniques of liquid noble gas dark matter detector and my involvement in the first/second generation of the dark matter detector. The latest progress on the commissioning of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) will be presented. The official science run of the LZ detector is expected later this year, the projected sensitivity will be presented in this talk as well.

  Presentation Slides