The XENON Dark Matter project: From XENON100 to XENON1T

Abstract

The XENON Collaboration is searching for Dark Matter interactions in a liquid xenon target. The XENON100 detector, a dual phase xenon Time Projection Chamber employing 161 kg of liquid xenon, started the first science run at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy in 2009. It provided limits on the spin-independent and spin-dependent interaction cross sections of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), and the couplings of solar axions and galactic axion-like particles. We present these results and the status of the successor experiment, XENON1T. The new detector, currently under construction and starting data taking in 2015, will employ 3.3 tons of liquid xenon, reaching a sensitivity to spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section of the order of 10-47cm2.