Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

Astrophysical evidence clearly demonstrates the existence of ""dark matter"" that is non-baryonic in nature but gravitationally significant at galactic and larger scales. Two decades of dedicated effort have so far failed to identify the nature of dark matter in searches for direct interactions of dark matter particles with ordinary matter in dedicated particle detectors, for decay products of dark matter annihilation in cosmic radiation or for signatures of the production of such particles at the Large Hadron Collider. This motivates new more sensitive experiments probing over a wider range of dark matter parameter space. SuperCDMS SNOLAB is a newly approved experiment, with capital funding from DOE and NSF in the US and CFI in Canada, that will have the world's best sensitivity to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with masses below ~10 GeV/c². SuperCDMS uses cryogenic semiconductor detectors to achieve ultra-low energy thresholds and has a strong, proven background rejection. It opens a window to low mass WIMP detection that cannot be probed by most other technologies. This new experiment at SNOLAB will have considerably increased target mass compared to the presently operating setup at the Soudan Underground Laboratory, as well as a significantly decreased energy threshold, providing superior sensitivity to the lowest mass WIMPs. This proposal requests operating funds for the Canadian SuperCDMS groups over the critical period during which SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be constructed. Canadian group members have key responsibility for data acquisition, trigger, experiment infrastructure, and detector testing for the new SNOLAB experiment. The requested funds will support postdoctoral fellows and graduate students at Queen's University and UBC, travel costs for group members to Sudbury during the construction phase, as well as collaboration meetings, visits to collaborating institutions and conference travel.