The XENON10 experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory uses a 15 kg xenon dual phase time projection chamber to search for dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The detector measures simultaneously the scintillation and the ionization produced by radiation in pure liquid xenon to discriminate signal from background down to 4.5 keV nuclear-recoil energy. A blind analysis of 58.6 live days of data, acquired between October 6, 2006, and February 14, 2007, and using a fiducial mass of 5.4 kg, excludes previously unexplored parameter space, setting a new 90% C.L. upper limit for the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross section of $8.8\times {10}^{-44}{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ for a WIMP mass of $100\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$, and $4.5\times {10}^{-44}{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ for a WIMP mass of $30\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$. This result further constrains predictions of supersymmetric models.

We report results of a search for light ($\lesssim 10\mathrm{GeV}$) particle dark matter with the XENON10 detector. The event trigger was sensitive to a single electron, with the analysis threshold of 5 electrons corresponding to 1.4 keV nuclear recoil energy. Considering spin-independent dark matter-nucleon scattering, we exclude cross sections ${\sigma }_n>7\times {10}^{-42}{\mathrm{cm}}^2$, for a dark matter particle mass $m_{\chi }=7\mathrm{GeV}$. We find that our data strongly constrain recent elastic dark matter interpretations of excess low-energy events observed by CoGeNT and CRESST-II, as well as the DAMA annual modulation signal.

XENON10 is an experiment to directly detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which may comprise the bulk of the nonbaryonic dark matter in our Universe. We report new results for spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interactions with ${}^{129}\mathrm{Xe}$ and ${}^{131}\mathrm{Xe}$ from 58.6 live days of operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. Based on the nonobservation of a WIMP signal in 5.4 kg of fiducial liquid xenon mass, we exclude previously unexplored regions in the theoretically allowed parameter space for neutralinos. We also exclude a heavy Majorana neutrino with a mass in the range of $\sim 10\mathrm{GeV}/c^2–2\mathrm{TeV}/c^2$ as a dark matter candidate under standard assumptions for its density and distribution in the galactic halo.

This comprehensive review summarizes the past, present, and future of plasmonic NP-based sensors in terms of different sensing platforms, different chemical and biological analytes, and the expected future technologies.