New Analysis Tightens Constraints on Light Dark Matter

The XENON1T experiment, in Italy’s underground Gran Sasso National Laboratory, searches for flashes of light caused by dark matter particles interacting with two tons of liquid xenon. The experiment is designed to spot a hypothesized type of dark matter called a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), but researchers have begun to sift the data for other potential forms. By reanalyzing results from 2017 and 2018, the XENON1T team has tightened constraints on the properties of WIMPs and other dark matter candidates. Although unable to announce a detection, the researchers excluded candidate particles with a range of parameters, including certain hypothesized axion-like particles and dark photons.