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Many astronomical and cosmological observations give evidence the existence of a non-luminous and massive matter component in the universe which is commonly referred to as dark matter (DM). One of the most favored class of particles which describes DM well, are weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) which arise naturally from many beyond the standard model theories.
Over the last decades, liquid xenon (LXe) dual-phase time projections chambers (TPCs) have become one of the most powerful tools in the search for WIMPs and other low energy, rare-event signals. One of the leading detectors in this field, XENONnT, which is utilized by the XENON collaboration, is currently operated at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy. It is the 4th generation of dual-phase TPC by the XENON collaboration with a target mass of 5.9 tons LXe, and an unprecedented low detector background.
In this seminar talk, I will give an introduction into the direct search of dark matter. Further, I will discuss, based on the XENONnT experiment, the enormous effort astroparticle physicists must make to search these rare signals, -making the detector a true multi-purpose observatory.