Dr Elizabeth Leason (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Dark matter makes up 85% of the matter content of the universe, but its nature remains a mystery. A range of experiments have now ruled out much of the allowed parameter space for conventional dark matter models, such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Alongside the traditional nuclear recoil WIMP search, direct detection experiments can carry out complementary electron recoil searches, using interactions of electrons with low mass fermions or bosons to probe a range of dark matter and new physics models.

This talk aims to address the reach of low energy electron recoil searches in the LUX and LZ direct detection experiments. Firstly, the results of a mirror dark matter search using LUX Run3 data will be presented. This is followed by a study of the sensitivity of the next generation LZ experiment to a range of different models which would result in an electron recoil signal. Finally, the problem of characterising a signal in the event of discovery will be explored, using a Bayesian approach.