Large Underground Xenon experiment

LUX was a dark matter search deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, built to look for direct evidence of weakly interacting massive particles. Installed 1,510 meters down in the former Homestake Mine, it used a liquid xenon time-projection chamber to detect faint light and electron signals from possible particle interactions while shielding and analysis suppressed background events. Beginning data collection in 2013, the collaboration of more than 100 scientists and engineers achieved the world’s most sensitive direct-detection limits at the time, found no WIMP signal in either major run, and significantly narrowed leading dark matter models before ending in 2016.

Lead, South Dakota · United States