C. Chiller

First results from the LUX dark matter experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is a dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber operating at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Lead, South Dakota). The LUX cryostat was filled for the first time in the underground laboratory in February 2013. We report results of the first WIMP search data set, taken during the period from April to August 2013, presenting the analysis of 85.3 live days of data with a fiducial volume of 118 kg. A profile-likelihood analysis technique shows our data to be consistent with the background-only hypothesis, allowing 90% confidence limits to be set on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering with a minimum upper limit on the cross section of 7.6 × 10(-46) cm(2) at a WIMP mass of 33 GeV/c(2). We find that the LUX data are in disagreement with low-mass WIMP signal interpretations of the results from several recent direct detection experiments.

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) Experiment

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) collaboration has designed and constructed a dual-phase xenon detector, in order to conduct a search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), a leading dark matter candidate. The goal of the LUX detector is to clearly detect (or exclude) WIMPS with a spin independent cross-section per nucleon of 2×10-46cm2, equivalent to ∼1event/100kg/month in the inner 100-kg fiducial volume (FV) of the 370-kg detector. The overall background goals are set to have <1 background events characterized as possible WIMPs in the FV in 300 days of running. This paper describes the design and construction of the LUX detector.

Tritium calibration of the LUX dark matter experiment

We present measurements of the electron-recoil (ER) response of the LUX dark matter detector based upon 170 000 highly pure and spatially uniform tritium decays. We reconstruct the tritium energy spectrum using the combined energy model and find good agreement with expectations. We report the average charge and light yields of ER events in liquid xenon at 180 and 105 V/cm and compare the results to the NEST model. We also measure the mean charge recombination fraction and its fluctuations, and we investigate the location and width of the LUX ER band. These results provide input to a reanalysis of the LUX run 3 weakly interacting massive particle search.