Overview
- The LZ collaboration combined 220 days of data from March 2023–April 2024 with 60 days from its first run for a 280-day (4.2 tonne-years) exposure published in Physical Review Letters.
- No WIMP dark matter candidates were confirmed, enabling the strongest direct-detection limits to date and further constraining leading models.
- Located nearly one mile underground at SURF in South Dakota, LZ uses about 10 tons of liquid xenon in nested titanium tanks to capture rare nuclear-recoil signals.
- Backgrounds such as neutrons and radon were suppressed with a gadolinium-loaded Outer Detector and a blinded “salting” procedure to mitigate bias in event selection.
- Data taking continues toward a 1,000-day target through 2028, with teams exploring analysis improvements, potential upgrades, broader rare-event searches, and plans for the next-generation XLZD.