The PandaX quest for dark matter

Located in the Sichuan Jingping underground laboratory, PandaX is a large scale xenon time projection chamber for the detection of rare events in particle physics and astrophysics. The dual-phase xenon chamber is used in the first and second stages to detect the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) directly. The first stage PandaX-I used 120 kg of xenon to confirm the possible WIMPs signals reported in other experiments, but did not see any conclusive signal. The second stage is now undergoing shakedown tests, with the detector upgraded to contain 500 kg of xenon. PandaX-II will start taking data in 2015, and is expected to extend the current limits of dark matter detection.