Title: Studies of GeV-scale WIMPs using charge signals at XENON100

Speaker: Richard Wall (Rice)

Abstract: Various theoretical models and recent experimental results have led to growing interest in the search for WIMP-like dark matter in the mass range of a few GeV.  One important class of detector used in this study is based on the liquid-gas, dual-phase Xenon time projection chamber (as in XENON100 and LUX).  These detectors nominally use both scintillation and ionization signals to define their fiducial volume and reject background events, and are, to date, most sensitive to WIMPs on the 10-100 GeV scale.  Using only the ionization signal, it is possible to achieve greater sensitivity to WIMPs with a mass on the scale of 1 GeV, as the scintillation detection efficiency for these recoils is, on average, quite low.  With this in mind, we present the a study of ionization signals using data collected by the XENON100 detector, with an eye towards improving the collaboration’s limit on WIMPs in this region.