Abstract

A thorough understanding of the nature of dark matter and the behavior of neutrinos is crucial to the advancement of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. In pursuit of this goal, scientists have spent the last two decades developing the liquid xenon time projection chamber (LXe TPC) for direct detection of these particles. The technology has been highly successful at constraining the parameter space of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP), with the current most-stringent limits on WIMP interactions calculated from the first engineering run of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. It has also been effectively co-opted to search for rare decays of xenon isotopes and the interactions of astrophysical neutrinos from a variety of sources. This talk overviews the LZ WIMP results and the most-pressing science cases for a next-generation xenon-based experiment that will be a versatile observatory for rare events of the most critical importance.