FIRST SCIENCE RESULTS FROM THE ZEPLIN-III DIRECT DARK MATTER SEARCH

ZEPLIN-III is a 12 kg two-phase xenon time projection chamber searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) accounting for dark matter in our Galaxy. Scintillation and ionisation in the liquid differentiate between nuclear and electron recoils above ∼10 keVnr. 847 kg·days data acquired between Feb 27th and May 20th 2008 has excluded a coherent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-section above 8:1 × 10⁻⁸ pb at 60 GeVc⁻²