What is the nature of Dark Matter? This is one of the most intriguing open questions of modern science and answering it is of fundamental importance to cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. Over the last three decades, to solve this puzzle, physicists all around the world have been building specialized low-background instruments capable of detecting the potential interactions of Dark Matter (DM) particles with ordinary matter. While these searches constrained the features of DM and its coupling rate with regular matter, the question remains unanswered. This award supports the University of Chicago group to continue its involvement in the XENON program, a direct search for DM. The XENON1T detector has been operating at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in central Italy since Spring 2016. It features a 2-tonne Liquid Xenon (LXe) target, instrumented as a two-phase Time Projection Chamber (TPC), capable of detecting possible interactions of DM particles with ordinary matter. XENON1T/nT will probe the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) paradigm, either detecting them or further constraining their features, as well as a variety of other DM candidates. In parallel, this program aims to further develop noble-liquids TPC technology, broadly used in particle physics for dark matter and neutrino searches.
This award will support the continuation of a partnerships with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Chicago (a local minority-dominated public school), the Great Lakes Planetarium Association and the Space Explorer Program. The program uses the mystery of dark matter to engage students, educators, and the broader public in cutting edge science. It recognizes that high school teachers are the experts in communication and dissemination and best qualified to find creative ways to integrate the PI's research into their teaching. The program targets teachers and planetarium staff and will have a deep and broad impact on hundreds of Under Represented Minority (URM) students, and thousands of Planetarium visitors. A part of the program will plug into the Space Explorer Program, a summer camp for high school URM students interested in astronomy and science.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
