XENON1T: the start of a new era in the search for Dark Matter
Résumé
The understanding of the nature of the mysterious Dark Matter in our Universe represents one of the biggest challenges in frontier science today. There are strong evidences for its existence from astrophysics and cosmological measurements. A number of proposed candidates have been put forward over time: one of the most compelling are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The XENON dark matter project aims at finding direct evidence for the scattering of WIMPs with target nuclei in an ultra-low background dual-phase xenon Time Projection Chamber (TPC) based detector. After the successful operation of the XENON100 instrument the next generation XENON1T is ready to start data taking at the italian Gran Sasso underground INFN National Laboratory. In this proceeding an introduction to the direct dark matter detection methods will be reviewed; the latest results of the XENON100 experiment will be firstly revised, then the special challenges related to a ton-scale liquid xenon detector will be discussed and the current status of the XENON1T experiment as well as its prospects and projected physics reach will be presented.