Journal Article

The XLZD Design Book: towards the next-generation liquid xenon observatory for dark matter and neutrino physics

Bishop, E., Lawes, C., Glade-Beucke, R., Tunnell, C. D., Shen, W., Vaitkus, A. C., Manalaysay, A., Carmona-Benitez, M. C., Elykov, A., Li, A., Sazzad, A. B. M. R., Stevens, A., Whitis, T. J., Kaboth, A. C., Valentino, O., Klute, M., Loizeau, J., Barillier, E., Radeka, V., Diglio, S., Murra, M., Tong, Z., Flierman, M., Homenides, G. J., Korolkova, E. v, Paetsch, B., Kudryavtsev, V. A., Tiedt, D. R., Davies, G. J., Sanchez, L., Radeka, S., Taylor, D. J., Soria, J., Pienaar, J., Wolf, J., Saakyan, R., Al Musalhi, A. K., Steidl, M., Lin, Y.-T., Biondi, Y., Hammann, R., Wittweg, C., Babicz, M., Green, J., Araújo, H. M., Capelli, C., Althueser, L., Miuchi, K., Wurm, M., Kim, J., Boehm, C., Liang, Z., Kaminaga, Y., Rischbieter, G. R. C., Yeh, M., Maupin, C., Rajado, M., de Viveiros, L., Xu, Z., Schwenk, A., Messina, M., Haiston, J. J., Fulgione, W., Gyorgy, P., Ramírez García, D., Neves, F., Marignetti, F., Sanchez-Lucas, P., Daniel Garcia, L. C., Abe, K., Pereira, G., Pollmann, T. R., Xu, Y., Fujikawa, K., Pompa, F., Bargemann, J. W., Beattie, K., Milosovic, B., Koke, D., Shi, S., McLaughlin, J. B., Paramesvaran, S., Kemp-Russell, P., Burdin, S., Balzer, M

2025

Overview

This report describes the experimental strategy and technologies for XLZD, the next-generation xenon observatory sensitive to dark matter and neutrino physics. In the baseline design, the detector will have an active liquid xenon target of 60 tonnes, which could be increased to 80 tonnes if the market conditions for xenon are favorable. It is based on the mature liquid xenon time projection chamber technology used in current-generation experiments, LZ and XENONnT. The report discusses the baseline design and opportunities for further optimization of the individual detector components. The experiment envisaged here has the capability to explore parameter space for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter down to the neutrino fog, with a 3σ evidence potential for WIMP-nucleon cross sections as low as 3 x 10–49 cm2 (at 40 GeV/c2 WIMP mass). The observatory will also have leading sensitivity to a wide range of alternative dark matter models. It is projected to have a 3σ observation potential of neutrinoless double beta decay of 136Xe at a half-life of up to 5.7 x 1027 years. Additionally, it is sensitive to astrophysical neutrinos from the sun and galactic supernovae.

• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Subject: Cryoelectron Microscopy / Dark Energy and Dark Matter / Experimental Particle Physics / Laboratory Astrophysics / Measurement Science and Instrumentation / NEMS / Neutrino Phenomena in Particle Physics / Physics - Physics of elementary particles and fields / PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS