Dark matter experiments usually look for signals of dark matter interacting with the nuclei, and so far there are stringent constraints from liquid xenon experiments. Now, XENON100 experiment also placed tight constrains for dark matter interacting with electrons. With ultra-low electron recoil background in XENON100, the new result rules out the interpretation of DAMA/LIBRA modulation signals as from dark matter electron interaction for some theoretical models. In addition, a search for modulation signals in XENON100’s electronic recoil data also found incompatible result with DAMA/LIBRA. Our group, especially graduate student Fei Gao, has contributed to the event rate analysis and search for modulation signals in XENON100 for the published two papers.
Further readings:
- Exclusion of Leptophilic Dark Matter Models using XENON100 Electronic Recoil Data, Science 349, 851 (2015)
- Search for Event Rate Modulation in XENON100 Electronic Recoil Data, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 091302 (2015)
- News from CERN Courier: XENON100 sees no evidence of dark matter interactions with electrons in liquid xenon.