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a friendly space to explore exciting research
Thursdays at noon, June 5th through August 14th
West Hall 335
Free lunch and coffee provided before every session!
Our next session is June 5th, 2025 at 12:00 PM
PGSS Invited Faculty Lecture: Liquid-noble detectors as tools for dark matter and neutrino physics
Assistant Professor Scott Haselschwardt
Understanding the particle nature of dark matter is one of the most pressing tasks of modern science, motivating numerous theoretical dark matter candidates and experimental efforts to detect them. Chief among these are direct-detection experiments which use liquified noble gasses as their detection medium. In this talk I will describe direct searches for weak scale dark matter particles, highlighting in particular the LUX ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, which uses liquid xenon as its detection medium. I will then discuss future efforts aimed at detecting dark matter lighter than the proton, including the development of a low threshold detector based on quasiparticle excitations of a superfluid helium-4 target (HeRALD). Taken together, these experiments directly probe an entire class of extremely well-motivated models known as “thermal relics”: dark matter particles that were once in thermal equilibrium with ordinary matter in the early Universe.
Click here for a full list of PGSS 2025 Speakers
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