Dark Matter

The General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is a balloon-borne experiment to search for signatures of dark matter annihilations in the cosmic rays. GAPS will carry out a highly sensitive search for anti-deuterons in the energy range below 1 GeV. These particles would be a signature for annihilating WIMP dark matter. GAPS is currently under construction with funding from NASA, JAXA and INFN with the initial launch of the scientific instrument scheduled for late 2020.



The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) project is a dark matter experiment selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) as the flagship U.S. dark matter experiment. It is located deep underground, at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota. The heart of the detector is a dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC), containing 7 tonnes of liquid xenon in the central active volume. The experiment has been designed to reach unprecedented sensitivity in the search for dark matter particles in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). These particles are aimed to be detected by looking for the rare interactions produced by their nuclear recoils in the active liquid xenon target. This active volume is viewed by two arrays of light detectors to detect signal interactions while being surrounded by veto detectors to improve background rejection in the central TPC. Click here for more details on the LZ experiment.