Prototyping of a new, ultrasensitive “eye” for dark matter is making rapid progress at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, according to researchers and engineers who have installed a small-scale version of the future LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) detector to test, develop and troubleshoot various aspects of its technology.
When LZ goes online in early 2020 at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, researchers hope it will detect so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), hypothetical particles believed to make up dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for 85 percent of all matter in the universe.
The detector’s core will be a five-foot-tall container filled with 10 tons of liquid xenon. When particles pass through it and collide with a xenon atom, the xenon atom emits a flash of light and also releases electrons, generating a second flash of light. These two consecutive light flashes could represent a characteristic WIMP signal, if all other possible origins have been ruled out.
One particular challenge, according to the research team, is to create a strong, stable electric field across the vessel to quickly pull all electrons to the top, where they can be detected. This requires applying high voltages over short distances at the bottom and top of the xenon container.

Tomasz Biesiadzinski (left, SLAC) and Jeremy Mock (State University of New York/Berkeley Lab) install a miniversion of the future LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter detector at a test stand at SLAC. Image: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
“We began testing the bottom part last year and have now assembled the entire prototype,” says Kimberly Palladino, an LZ scientist at SLAC and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Our goal is to reach high voltages of 100 kilovolts without sparking, demonstrate that the system runs stably over time, and reduce the stray emissions we’ve been observing.”
Researchers from various groups around the world are also coming to SLAC, testing equipment they are developing for the experiment, including the cooling system, xenon purification and circulation, control systems and sensors.
In parallel, SLAC’s team is working on a system to remove an isotope of the chemical element krypton that would cause unwanted signals in the LZ detector from commercially available xenon. The goal is to reach a level of 15 krypton atoms or less per one million billion xenon atoms. Once the design goal has been reached, the researchers will build a large-scale system to purify all 10 tons of xenon needed for the experiment.