Public Physic Colloquium in the Winter Terms 2009/2010 in Münster
Place:     Germany, 48149 Münster, Wilhelm-Klemm-Str. 10, IG I, HS 2
Time:     Thursday, 28.01.2010  16:00 h c.t.
Colloquium Coffee at 15:45 h  at the Lecture Hall

The Search for Dark Matter with the XENON Experiment
Prof. Dr. Elena Aprile, Experimental Particle and Gamma-Ray Astrophysics, Columbia University

Large volume liquid xenon detectors with excellent self-shielding and background discrimination are advancing at a fast pace and promise to impact the field of dark matter direct detection in a significant way. The XENON program aims at probing  WIMP-nucleon interactions with more than three order of magnitude sensitivity improvement over the most stringent limits reported to date, using a ton-scale liquid xenon time projection chamber. I will review the properties of liquid xenon which make it an excellent target-detector medium for particle dark matter and present the status and physics reach of the current phase of the program, the XENON100 experiment in operation at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory, as well as plans towards XENON1T.