Seminars relevant to Informatics

[Lorna Adams <Lorna.Adams AT ed.ac.uk>]

 

 

 

Dear All,

 

As you probably saw, our colleagues made international news last week when the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter experiment announced an intriguing event in their latest data analysis.  Very exciting!  It's also a great opportunity to appreciate the ingenuity and interesting physics that goes into designing a detector with enough sensitivity to detect such an event.  For our first Higgs Colloquium of the fall, come hear our own Sally Shaw tell us what it's all about!

 

Speaker: Sally Shaw (University of Edinburgh) 

 

Title: An Intriguing New Result from the LZ Dark Matter Search

 

Abstract: The nature of dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern science, and the liquid xenon direct detection experiment LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is world-leading in sensitivity to a wide range of dark-matter models. A new analysis from LZ searching for effective field theory and inelastic models of dark matter finds a single nuclear recoil at 248 keV, in tension with the background-only hypothesis with a global significance of 2.6σ. Whilst this is far from a detection, the event is nevertheless intriguing. I will give an overview of the analysis, relevant high-energy backgrounds, and the wider implications of the event for dark matter searches.

 

Date: Friday, 11th September 2026

Time: 14:15/2:15 pm

Venue: James Clerk Maxwell Building, Lecture Theatre A (NOTE THE UNUSUAL ROOM AND TIME!)

 

Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/34955934083062?p=a3vf0IXHtpaLrIDXoi

Passcode: ZE3w4xn2

 

Info: https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/colloquia/an-intriguing-new-result-from-the-lz-dark-matter-search/

 

Hope to see you there!

-Latham