Seminars

The LZ Outer Detector

by Bjoern Penning

Europe/London
Description

LZ will be the world's most sensitive dark matter direct detection experiment, starting to take data in Spring 2020. The experiment is located 1 mi underground in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD. LZ consists of a central time projection chamber (TPC) containing 7 tonnes of liquid xenon as dark matter target surrounded by an outer detector (OD) with 17 tonnes of gadolinium doped liquid scintillator to veto neutrons. The OD provides a substantial increase in the background-free liquid xenon mass of LZ, expanding the volume available for WIMP search. The use of active veto detectors has been adopted by all upcoming direct dark matter experiments and are indispensable to the future of the field. I will report on the design studies, radioactive background requirements and results, and expected performance of the LZ Outer Detector. Finally I will give an overview of the current status of the LZ experiment and expected sensitivity.