Dr Amy Cottle - Searching for dark matter: latest results from the LZ experiment and future prospects

Wednesday 26 Nov 2025, 12:00 → 15:00 Europe/London

610 (G.O. Jones Bulding)

https://cern.zoom.us/j/68995045975?pwd=fdpw3jZ4ZPU61gbaTtDASbS03qKbf4.1

About the speaker: 

Amy Cottle is a lecturer in particle physics at University College London, focussing on direct dark matter detection. She is a member of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) collaboration, where she led efforts to deliver new world-leading limits on WIMP dark matter-nucleon interactions. She is also part of the XLZD collaboration, focussing on the control of backgrounds, radiopurity and cleanliness integral to the planning of this future rare-physics observatory.

 

13:30 → 14:00 Biscuits/Coffee/Socialization

14:00 → 15:00 Searching for dark matter: latest results from the LZ experiment and future prospects

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment is a dark matter direct detection experiment operating almost a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. LZ uses a 7 active-tonne dual-phase xenon time projection chamber primarily designed to detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a well-motivated class of dark matter candidate. New world-leading constraints were released last summer, which exclude spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interactions down to a minimum of 2.2 x 10^{-48} cm^2 for a 40 GeV/c^2 WIMP mass. This talk will give a overview of LZ and report on these latest results, as well as searches for other new physics phenomena and plans for the next-generation experiment, XLZD.

Convener: Dr Amy Cottle (UCL)