Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

The existence of dark matter is largely undisputed, yet even 80 years after its first discovery all evidence is based on gravitational effects on large scales only. After more than two decades of dedicated effort, the sensitivity of searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) proposed to explain the dark matter observations has reached a level that overlaps largely with the prediction of models developed with the most basic assumptions. The lack of a signal in direct searches for WIMP interactions as well as the lack of evidence for new particles at the LHC forces us to consider models other than the simplest SuperSymmetric extensions of the standard model of particle physics. The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (SuperCDMS) embraces this demand by improving the design of the cryogenic semiconductor detectors to extending the sensitivity to particles with masses down to below half a GeV/c2, considerably below the traditional search range for Supersymmetric WIMPs. Using different target materials (germanium and silicon) also opens the door to testing no-standard interaction mechanisms between dark matter particle and atomic nuclei. SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be constructed with capital funding from DOE and NSF in the US and CFI in Canada over the coming years. 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, UBC, the University of Toronto and at Laurentian University/SNOLAB, travel costs for group members to the different SuperCDMS test facilities for DAQ work and detector testing and to Sudbury during the construction phase, as well as collaboration meetings, visits to collaborating institutions and conference travel.