Since the 1930s, many astrophysical and cosmological observations have motivated the search for dark matter particles, leading to the development of a wide variety of experiments specifically designed to achieve their first direct detection. Noble liquids such as argon and xenon have demonstrated unique sensitivity to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), a major class of dark matter candidates, while also extending the current neutrino network through their unique sensitivity to all flavours of MeV-scale neutrinos released by the Sun and by future galactic supernovae, setting the ground for next-generation multipurpose observatories in noble liquids, such as DarkSide-20k (argon) and XLZD (xenon). Within this talk, we investigate the main advantages and challenges of rare-event searches in noble liquids, review their working principles and physics potential, finally discussing the prospects for future experiments and the ongoing R&D programs aimed at expanding their physics reach.
I am originally from Sardinia, a warm and windy island in Italy, where I earned my degrees, up to a PhD in Physics. Since my first postdoctoral appointment in Italy, I have investigated new techniques to enhance the potential of noble liquids by mixing argon and xenon, an R&D program that I then brought to my second postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, Riverside. After almost two years of both local R&D, surrounded by an enthusiastic crew of undergraduate and graduate students, and data analysis within the DEAP-3600 and DarkSide-20k experiments, I was hired at Queen's to begin my tenure-track career, focusing on the physics potential of future experiments, now in both argon and xenon, their common challenges, and the R&D that we can develop in Canada to further boost their physics reach.