Say hello to the world's most sensitive dark matter detector - by AndyTomaswick
Despite all of LZ’s troubles, in December of 2021, it was formally brought online and began collecting data. That data formed the basis of a recent paper, proving that LZ is the most sensitive dark matter detector ever created.
That is not to say that it actually saw any dark matter in its first run. Notoriously tricky to detect using any method other than gravity, dark matter remains an enigma to this day. But scientists have honed in on a detection methodology that they think will help them understand it better, and it’s this technology that forms the basis of LZ’s system.Credit – Matthew Kapust
A giant tank filled with liquid xenon comprises the bulk of the system, with an array of photomultiplier tubes that can detect when one of the myriad xenon atoms is smacked by a particle that could “mimic a dark matter signal.” In that case, the atom lights up, which is then detected by one of the PMTs, which can also isolate the spatial area and direction the particle was traveling.
If the detector itself was above ground, too many of these particles would create too much noise compared to the dark matter signal. Hence, why the detector is located under the Earth’s surface at the Sanford Underground Research Facility . SURF also hosts other sensitive experiments that benefit from the shielding afforded by the Earth’s surface, so LZ fits right in with the rest.
So far, LZ has only a few months of operation, but even those results excite the team that had initially designed and built the detector. There’s plenty more science to come, though, with the plan currently to collect 20 times more data than has been so far. Given the difficulty in detecting dark matter and science’s general penchant that more data is better, that sounds like an excellent proposition for finding dark matter if it does exist.
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