In Pursuit of Dark Matter: Recent Results from the SuperCDMS Experiment

Jodi Cooley is an Associate Professor in the Physics Department at Southern Methodist University. Her current research interest is to improve our understanding of the universe by deciphering the nature of dark matter.Presented on October 27, 2014 in the Howey Physics Building, room L2 at 3:00 p.m.Runtime: 64:14 minutesThe existence of dark matter was first postulated by Jan Oort in1932 to account for the orbital velocities of stars in the Milky Way. Since that time, astrophysicists and astronomers have produced compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter and determined that it constitutes the bulk of the matter in the Universe. Despite this fact, the composition of the dark matter remains unknown. One compelling candidate for particle dark matter is the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). Working in a low-background environment in the Soudan Mine, located in northern Minnesota, the SuperCDMS experiment is designed to directly detect interactions between WIMPs and nuclei in its target Ge crystals. In this talk I will present the latest results from the SuperCDMS experiment. I will also discuss the current status of the SuperCDMS at Soudan experiment and plans for a future 50-kg scale experiment which is slated for operation in SNOLAB