First results from the XENON1T dark matter experiment

Teresa Marrodán

Strong evidence for the existence of dark matter arises from astronomical and cosmological measurements. Commonly, elementary particles are assumed to be the constituents of this new form of non-luminous matter. Among the candidates, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are favoured. A measurement of the direct scattering of these particles off target nuclei would provide very valuable information on the dark matter particle mass and its interaction probability with ordinary matter. Among the direct dark-matter search detectors, the liquid xenon time-projection chambers (TPCs) have shown best sensitivities for WIMP masses above few GeV/c2. So far the data released provides no evidence for a positive signal and the resulting exclusion limits on the WIMP-nucleon cross section for spin-dependent and -independent interactions rule out theoretically favoured regions.

The XENON1T detector is currently the largest running two-phase xenon TPC with a total mass of ~3.2 tons. It is acquiring science data since 2016 at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in Italy. After an introduction to dark matter and the status of the field, this talk will present the XENON1T detector and the results from the first science run.