Dr Kelsey Oliver-Mallory (Imperial College London)
A thorough understanding of the nature of dark matter and the behavior of neutrinos is crucial to the advancement of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. In pursuit of this goal, scientists have spent the last two decades developing the liquid xenon time projection chamber (LXe TPC) for direct detection of these particles. The technology has been highly successful at constraining the parameter space of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles and has demonstrated extensive sensitivity to alternative dark matter candidates. It has been effectively co-opted to search for neutrinoless double beta decay and the interactions of astrophysical neutrinos from a variety of sources. A next-generation xenon-based experiment will be a versatile observatory for rare events of the most critical importance. This talk overviews the most pressing science cases for such a detector and highlights some of the technical challenges overcome through years of successful operations with LXe TPCs.
