Upcoming Event

Over sky, under ground & down the beamline: The pursuit of WIMP dark matter

Presented by Linda Xu 

Register here to join us in-person, or watch online. 

One of the clearest signs that we still have much to learn about the fundamental laws of nature is the evidence for invisible "dark" matter. Observations of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and radiation from the Big Bang imply that 85% of the mass in the universe is made of this dark matter, something fundamentally different from the stuff that makes up our everyday objects, and which we cannot describe with our current theory of elementary particles. In the 50 years since we have known about it, a plethora of ideas have been put forward to describe this odd phenomenon. A particularly intriguing proposal is the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), a particle that may also help us explain other mysteries of particle physics. Here at SLAC, we are actively searching for WIMP dark matter. In this lecture, I will describe three complementary  experimental approaches: the search for exotic gamma-ray light with the Fermi Space Telescope, rare nuclear interactions in the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment deep underground and strange events and tracks at a future high energy particle collider. These scientific efforts, which span multiple decades from our past and continue into our future, can converge to help us better understand what our universe is made of. 

About Linda Xu

Linda Xu is a postdoctoral researcher in the SLAC theory group and at KIPAC (Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology). She thinks about different ways we can learn about the universe, the particles it contains and the mysterious ways it interacts. She obtained a bachelor’s degree from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and a PhD from Harvard University in 2021, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining Stanford University and SLAC in 2024. She has often found evidence for mysterious interactions by observing the regular matter in her own home, but in a way that is consistent with having several house cats. 

Upcoming Event

Over sky, under ground & down the beamline: The pursuit of WIMP dark matter

Presented by Linda Xu 

Public Lectures
Public Lecture: Linda Xu
Dec 10
Date
Thursday, December 10, 2026
7:00–8:00 p.m. PST
Science and User Support Building (SUSB)
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