München 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 2: Hauptvorträge I

HK 2.1: Hauptvortrag

Montag, 18. März 2019, 11:15–11:50, Plenarsaal

Search for dark matter and other rare/exotic processes with XENON1T/nT — •Christian Weinheimer — Institut für Kernphysik, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

Cosmological observations at very different scales provide evidence for dark matter, which neither can consist of baryonic matter nor can be normal neutrinos. Several candidates for this dark matter are proposed: Weakly interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) arise naturally in many models beyond the Standard Model and solve at the same time the hierarchy problem. Other candidates are axions solving additionally the CP-problem of QCD or sterile neutrinos with keV masses.

The XENON experiments searching directly for WIMPs at the Italian underground laboratory LNGS use dual-phase xenon TPCs with ultralow background and very low threshold. XENON1T has just been finished after collecting an exposure of 1 t yr. It is giving the most stringent limits on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon and WIMP-pion cross sections. The WIMP search will go on with XENONnT possessing a xenon mass of 8 t at an even lower background.

After an introduction, the current results of XENON1T and the status of XENONnT will be presented in this talk. Special emphasis will be given on different possible interactions of WIMPs with the nucleus and how they can be distinguished in the case of a WIMP discovery. The XENON detectors with their large mass and their low background rates can also look for other exotic or rare processes. The current status of the search for double electron capture of Xe-124 and for neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136 will be given.