LZ Dark Matter Experiment – LZUK
LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a next-generation physics experiment searching for the elusive dark matter particles which are believed to make up most of the mass of the universe.
The LZ detector will employ a 7-tonne liquid xenon target to search for the rare interactions of these particles with ordinary atoms in the detector medium. The experiment will be located one mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Lead, South Dakota, USA).
The international LZ collaboration is composed of over 200 scientists and engineers in 38 institutes in the US, UK, Portugal, Russia and South Korea. This is the site of LZUK, the collaboration of nine UK institutes working on LZ.
“The international LZ collaboration is composed of over 200 scientists and engineers in 38 institutes.”
LZ resulted from the merging of the LUX and ZEPLIN-III collaborations. The LZUK collaboration includes around 50 researchers from nine UK institutes and is funded by the Science & Technology Facilities Council to deliver key contributions to the LZ Project. This website contains information about these UK contributions. UK scientists have been at the forefront of dark matter searches since the late 1980s and were among the first to deploy the ‘two-phase xenon’ technology used in LZ to search for dark matter.
View of the LZ experiment showing the central Xenon Detector inside the titanium cryostat, the Outer Detector acrylic tanks containing liquid scintillator, all within a shielding tank of ultra-pure water.
Layout of the LZ experiment in the Davis Lab at the 4850-ft level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Lead, South Dakota, USA).