For the better part of a century, people have been trying to understand dark matter. This invisible substance makes up roughly 85% of the mass in the universe but has never been directly detected. Determining exactly what it is remains one of the biggest questions about our world.
Now, a new analysis from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment has recorded a single particle interaction that researchers have great difficulty explaining with known background signals from normal matter. The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery, but is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date.
LZ is an international collaboration of 250 scientists and engineers from 39 institutions, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The detector is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and operates nearly one mile below ground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. The experiment uses 10 tonnes of ultrapure liquid xenon to search for dark matter and is optimized to look for WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles.
The results were presented in a scientific talk at the 2026 TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan. The paper will be released on the online repository arXiv and submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters.
“We’re very intrigued to see this event in the data, in the region where we expect dark matter to show up and the competing backgrounds are very low,” said Rick Gaitskell, a professor at Brown University and the spokesperson for LZ. “With only one event, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We are not claiming to have seen dark matter. But we have seen something interesting that we want to share with the scientific community for their input.”
LLNL scientist Jingke Xu chairs the LZ speaker board and coordinated the conference announcement of this result.
“This outlier event could be described by one of the dark-matter models we have explored,” he said. “But we have also seen unexpected backgrounds in the past as detectors get more sensitive, so we must be cautious and continue to examine all the possibilities.”
A single outstanding event
The LZ collaboration studies experimental data in batches. In the new result, researchers analyzed 220 live days of data collected between March 2023 and April 2024. The collaboration had previously searched this dataset for faint signals from the simplest kinds of WIMP interactions. The new analysis searched for a broader range of possible WIMP interactions that could deposit more energy in the detector. LZ is particularly sensitive to such signals while also minimizing false positives.
“This was a detailed study in a region we hadn’t explored within this dataset, and we spent months of additional effort to understand all the possible causes of background events,” said Sam Eriksen, a senior research associate at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and lead author of the study. “We understand our detector and the backgrounds so well that even a single outstanding event, like the one we found, is important. We expect dark-matter events to be extremely rare, so only a handful could mark the first detection of WIMP dark matter.”
If the anomalous event was caused by dark matter, the WIMP that generated it would likely have a mass of at least 200 GeV/c2 (gigaelectronvolts), or more than 200 times the mass of a proton. It would also suggest a specific type of interaction between WIMPs and ordinary matter beyond the simplest model.
The LZ results have not reached “5-sigma” significance, the statistical threshold considered a discovery in physics. The new analysis is 2.6 sigma, meaning there is approximately a 0.5% chance that the event could be explained by known backgrounds.
LZ uses a cylindrical chamber full of liquid xenon to search for dark matter. It is surrounded by additional layers to detect or block background particles (left). When a WIMP collides with a xenon atom (right), it emits a flash of light and electrons. The light is detected at the top and bottom of the liquid xenon chamber. An electric field drifts the electrons to the top of the chamber, where they generate a second flash of light. (Image: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Crucial calibration
LZ searches for dark matter by looking for signature flashes of light from energy deposited in the detector. The collaboration leverages multiple methods to prevent or account for particle interactions caused by normal matter. This includes the mile of rock that shields the detector from cosmic rays from space, a water tank and outer detectors that protect the central detector from background neutrons, and a suite of computational tools that disentangle particle interactions and reject dark-matter mimics.
Those efforts depend critically on understanding the detector’s responses to natural backgrounds and to expected dark-matter signals. This task has been undertaken by LLNL researchers, with Rachel Mannino, the run manager for LZ, leading the charge to envision, plan and execute detector calibrations for LZ.
In addition, the LLNL team has independently calibrated LZ-style detectors in previously unexplored energy regions. A current Laboratory Directed Research and Development project is making strides in understanding both the xenon physics and detector response in the energy region related to the event.
“This interesting LZ event was observed in a relatively high-energy region,” said Xu. “We are focused on making sure we understand everything that goes into calibrating and interpreting interactions at this high energy.”
The LLNL project will provide important information as researchers throughout the collaboration analyze more data to refute or confirm the finding. LZ has already accumulated the world’s largest dark matter dataset and will continue to accrue WIMP search data at SURF, substantially improving search statistics.
LZ is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility. LZ is also supported by the Science & Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics; and the Institute for Basic Science, Korea. Thirty-nine institutions of higher education and advanced research provided support to LZ. The LZ collaboration acknowledges the assistance of the Sanford Underground Research Facility.