Scientists from the XENON collaboration announced a new result from their search for dark matter. The analysis of data taken with the XENON100 detector during 13 months of operation at the Gran Sasso Laboratory (Italy) provided no evidence for the existence of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), the leading dark matter candidates. Two events being observed are statistically consistent with one expected event from background radiation. Compared to their previous 2011 result the world-leading sensitivity has again been improved by a factor of 3.5. This constrains models of new physics with WIMP candidates even further and it helps to target future WIMP searches. A paper with the results is going to be submitted to Physical Review Letters and on the arXiv.

The XENON collaboration consists of scientists from 15 institutions in the USA (Columbia University New York, University of California Los Angeles, Rice University Houston, Purdue University), France (Subatech Nantes), Germany (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik Heidelberg, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster), Israel (Weizmann Institute of Science), Italy (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Università di Bologna), Netherlands (Nikhef Amsterdam), Portugal (Universidade de Coimbra), Switzerland (Universität Zürich), and China (Shanghai Jiao Tong University).

Prof. Karl Giboni, Dr. Kaixuan Ni and two doctoral students Qing Lin and Fei Gao from Shanghai Jiao Tong University participated in this research.

More details at: http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1032039