Monday, July 25, 2022

XENON1T Signal Not Supported By XENONnT

I have been arguing since the results came out that the XENON1T "signals" of dark matter aren't reliable because it didn't adequately control for background effects. The new and improved next generation version of the same experiment supports my conclusion.

The new XENONnT dark matter exclusion complements that of LZ. The LZ experiment is looking for dark matter with traditional WIMP model masses. The XENONnT experiment is looking for dark matter with masses typical of warm dark matter models, and other highly energetic lighter dark matter candidates like axion-like particles (ALPs). Both see no signal to high precisions.



Slide 26 compares the XENON1T excess with the new XENONnT result, and it's clear it was not a real signal. Probably some tritium contamination, maybe just a statistical fluctuation, but certainly not new physics.

1 comment:

andrew said...

Preprint here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.11330