Welcome to the homepage of the DARWIN project

DARWIN: dark matter wimp search with liquid xenon The low-background astroparticle physics observatory. The DARWIN project aims at the realisation of a future astroparticle observatory in Europe as identified in the APPEC Roadmap. The goal is to design and construct the ultimate dark matter detector, using a multi-ton target of liquid xenon for the direct detection of particle dark matter in a sensitive time projection chamber. The DARWIN project, its science goals, main background and technological challenges are described here [JCAP 11, 017 (2016)].

DARWIN aims at pushing the sensitivity to new levels in order to eventually cover the entire WIMP-parameter space before neutrino backgrounds dominate. Such a detector would not only have a realistic chance of discovering the nature of dark matter, but would also be able to study its properties such as mass, interaction strength and its local distribution in our galaxy. DARWIN will search for WIMP dark matter over a wide mass region, from as low as 5 GeV/c² to above 10 TeV/c², via various possible couplings (spin-independent, spin-dependent, inelastic). Its low background will also make it ideally suited for a large number of other rare event searches. Prime examples are: solar neutrinos, especially the low-energy pp-neutrinos; neutrinoless double beta-decay of ¹³⁶Xe without isotopic enrichment; axions and axion-like particles, neutrinos from supernovae and various rare nuclear processes. DARWIN will be the low-background, low-threshold astroparticle physics observatory.

DARWIN brings together several groups, mainly from Europe and the USA, uniting expertise on liquid xenon detectors, low-background techniques, cryogenic infrastructure, shielding, data analysis and simulation and astroparticle physics phenomenology. Dual-phase liquid xenon detectors have successfully demonstrated to be highly competitive to the other main technologies in this area. They offer low-threshold, ultra-low background and position-sensitive detectors which can be scaled to the multi-ton target masses which are required to detect weakly interacting massive particles.