Speaker
Description
Xenon and argon have historically been among the most successful target materials for dark matter searches using direct‑detection experiments in underground laboratories. Xenon benefits from its larger atomic size, while the lighter argon nucleus allows for larger recoil energies when struck by a GeV‑scale dark matter particle, particularly in experiments that measure charge or nucleation. To extend dark matter searches further into the sub‑GeV mass range, xenon‑doped argon has emerged as an ideal target material. It has already been tested in ProtoDUNE, is currently under validation in the Scintillating Bubble Chamber experiment, and is a potential candidate for the DarkSide‑LowMass program. In this talk, we review the current challenges facing the xenon‑doped argon research program and discuss its potential impact on the dark matter and neutrino physics communities, if the technology is successfully scaled to multi‑tonne detectors.
