AI Article Synopsis

  • The XENONnT experiment conducted the first search for nuclear recoils caused by weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) using a 5.9-ton liquid xenon detector.
  • During the experiment, the background noise from radioactive isotopes was minimized, yielding a low electronic recoil background rate of 15.8 events per ton per year per keV.
  • The analysis found no significant excess of nuclear recoil events, leading to an improved upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon interaction cross section, surpassing previous results from the earlier XENON1T experiment.

Article Abstract

We report on the first search for nuclear recoils from dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with the XENONnT experiment, which is based on a two-phase time projection chamber with a sensitive liquid xenon mass of 5.9 ton. During the (1.09±0.03)  ton yr exposure used for this search, the intrinsic ^{85}Kr and ^{222}Rn concentrations in the liquid target are reduced to unprecedentedly low levels, giving an electronic recoil background rate of (15.8±1.3)  events/ton yr keV in the region of interest. A blind analysis of nuclear recoil events with energies between 3.3 and 60.5 keV finds no significant excess. This leads to a minimum upper limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section of 2.58×10^{-47}  cm^{2} for a WIMP mass of 28  GeV/c^{2} at 90% confidence level. Limits for spin-dependent interactions are also provided. Both the limit and the sensitivity for the full range of WIMP masses analyzed here improve on previous results obtained with the XENON1T experiment for the same exposure.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.041003DOI Listing

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