Dark Matter Search Results from <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>4.2</mml:mn> <mml:mtext> </mml:mtext> <mml:mtext> </mml:mtext> <mml:mtext>Tonne</mml:mtext> <mml:mtext>−</mml:mtext> <mml:mtext>Years</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> of Exposure of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
J. Aalbers, D. S. Akerib, A. K. Al Musalhi et al.
We report results of a search for nuclear recoils induced by weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter using the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) two-phase xenon time projection chamber. This analysis uses a total exposure of
4.2
±
0.1
tonne-years from 280 live days of LZ operation, of which
3.3
±
0.1
tonne-years and 220 live days are new. A technique to actively tag background electronic recoils from
Pb
214
β
decays is featured for the first time. Enhanced electron-ion recombination is observed in two-neutrino double electron capture decays of
Xe
124
, representing a noteworthy new background. After removal of artificial signal-like events injected into the dataset to mitigate analyzer bias, we find no evidence for an excess over expected backgrounds. World-leading constraints are placed on spin-independent (SI) and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon cross sections for masses
≥
9
GeV
/
c
2
. The strongest SI exclusion set is
2.2
×
10
−
48
cm
2
at the 90% confidence level and the best SI median sensitivity achieved is
5.1
×
10
−
48
cm
2
, both for a mass of
40
GeV
/
c
2
.
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