The XENON100 Detector

TL;DR

The XENON100 detector is a highly sensitive liquid xenon time projection chamber designed to detect rare WIMP interactions, achieving low background levels and setting competitive limits on WIMP-nucleon cross sections, with ongoing data collection for dark matter searches.

Contribution

This paper presents the design, operation, and initial results of the XENON100 detector, highlighting its unprecedented low background levels and constraints on WIMP interactions.

Findings

Background level below 0.15 events/day/keV in 30 kg target

No WIMP detection in 100.9 live days of data

Set upper limits on WIMP-nucleon cross sections

Abstract

XENON100 is a liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chamber built to search for rare collisions of hypothetical, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Operated in a low-background shield at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy, XENON100 has reached the unprecedented background level of $<$0.15 events/day/\kevr in the energy range below 100 \kevr in 30 kg of target mass, before electronic/nuclear recoil discrimination. It found no evidence for WIMPs during a dark matter run lasting for 100.9 live days in 2010, excluding with 90% confidence scalar WIMP-nucleon cross sections above 7x10$^{-45}$ cm$^{2}$ at a WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c$^{2}$. A new run started in March 2011, and more than 200 live days of WIMP-search data have been acquired. Results of this second run are expected to be released in summer 2012.