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The CDMS group of Syracuse University is working on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, which has as its major goal the detection of the non-baryonic form of matter, the so called dark matter, using advanced cryogenic detectors. Dark matter is believed by comologists and astrophysicists to account for the missing mass of the universe. It contributes about 80% of the total mass and about 20% of the total energy density of the universe. The CDMS experiment is sensitive to interactions from a favored form of non-baryonic dark matter, Weakly Interating Massive Particles (WIMPs). WIMPs are a generic category of particle that can include supersymmetric particles, particles in extra dimensions, or other possibilities that theorists dream up. This WIMP particle interacts weakly with normal matter, so to detect it, one needs to have extremely few interactions from other, normal particles. This is why the CDMS experiment is taking place deep underground in the Minessota mine.
The CDMS group at Syracuse is one of the 14 universities working together in the collaboration for the search of WIMPs.
CDMS detectors are semiconductor crystals of Ge or Si with thin-film superconducting transition-edge sensors, cooled down to four hundredths of a degree above absolute zero.. These detectors provide the highest quality and quantity of information of any WIMP-search experiment, resulting in the best discovery potential of any direct dark matter search, and have already yielded the world's most sensitive published limits on the WIMP-nucleon cross-section.
There are immediate opportunities for work on operations, analysis, and simulations of the current CDMS experiment as well as characterization of new detector designs for SuperCDMS, whose first phase is funded.
Professor Richard Schnee is the Science Coordinator for SuperCDMS, and he has particular interest in directing work aimed at using novel analysis techniques to provide even better discrimination against current WIMP backgrounds. The group would also like students to focus in part on development, construction, and commissioning of the BetaCage, a funded project he is co-leading to build the world's most sensitive detector of radioactive surface contamination, with applications for rare-event searches including dark matter and neutrino physics.
The BetaCage consists of a shielded, radiopure drift chamber designed to allow optimal rejection of ambient backgrounds. Work on this project will build expertise on low-background techniques, hardware fabrication, data acquisition, Monte Carlo simulations of particle transport, and data analysis. Work on the prototype for this detector is ongoing.
