Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 81: Search for Dark Matter III

T 81.3: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2026, 16:45–17:00, AM 00.014

Studies of dielectric breakdown in liquid xenon with the MOTION detector — •Keyu Ding — Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Astroparticle Physics

Next-generation liquid xenon (LXe) dark matter detectors are expected to double their linear dimensions compared to current-generation experiments. The future XLZD Observatory aims to build a detector with an inner diameter and height of nearly 3 m, hosting 60 tonnes of LXe in a time-projection chamber (TPC). The result, a tenfold increase in mass, enables dark matter searches approaching the neutrino fog, as well as rare-event searches such as neutrinoless double-beta decay and supernova neutrinos.

With the increased TPC height, the voltage delivered to the cathode exceeds previously tested ranges in LXe at this scale. Although LXe is predicted to sustain bulk fields near 1 MV/cm, experiments consistently observe dielectric breakdown at values much closer to the operating fields (O(10–100) kV).

The MOTION detector, an ∼70 kg LXe setup at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, is used to study dielectric breakdown in LXe. We investigate how local field enhancement at electrode asperities and stressed electrode areas affect breakdown using various diagnostic methods. This work is supported by the Impuls und Vernetzungsfonds of the Helmholtz Association (grant no. VH-NG-21-02).

Keywords: Dark matter; Time-projection chamber; Dielectric breakdown