RE: June 17th, 2020 - a great discovery in (astro)particle physics?
(Edited)
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Getting there would require a significant reduction of the error bars, which will be possible with the future upgrade of XENON1T into XENONnT. XENONnT is indeed expected to allow for a better control of the background, and involves a three times larger detector.
If the dector is three times larger, would the 1 in 1,750,000 ratio then be decreases by a multiple of three as well?
Also, forgive my ignorance, but didn't the Haldron collider already solve this?
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Thanks for passing by and the questions. And apologies for answering only know (am in the middle of a heavy committee meeting).
What actually matter is the exposure , measured in ton-years. Having a larger detector implies that the exposure will grow faster, but the time of the experiment is also relevant. With more data and a background under a better control (as planned for XENONnT), the same excess would be much more significant thanks to smaller error bars.
Let's take a simpler example and assume we should see 10±3 events. Now, let's consider we observe 16 events. This is slightly in tension with the expectation (2sigma away from the central value; i.e. twice the error upper limit). Now, let's assume we have a new version of the experiment with more statistics and a background under better control, so that our expectation is 11±1 event. Our 16 events observation is now a discovery.
Does it clarify?
Not really. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN tries to observe dark matter. However, there is no sign of it in data so far.
Yes, that did actually answer my question. I think what is safe to say is that the hone-in is much more accurate because of it. Rather than allowing for more error, we essentially can make a more predictable outcome. Correct?
As for Hadron, I thought they had observed dark matter. Apparently I am not with the times.
Correct, assuming that the excess will stay and that it is not an issue with the mismodelling of the background (which is being investigated at the time I write).
They discovered many things, in particular the Higgs boson in 2012 and various composite states. In the last case, it is interesting to emphasise a new charmed tetraquark particle two days ago; this will be the topic of my next post but I don't think I won't find the time to write that post before next week. The LHC has also revealed various intriguing features, but it is too early to conclude anything about them.