University of Pennsylvania
Department of Physics and Astronomy
High Energy Physics Seminar

Abstract

Overwhelming observational evidence indicates that most of the matter in the Universe consists of non-baryonic dark matter. One possibility is that the dark matter is Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that were produced in the early Universe. These relics could comprise the Milky Way's dark halo and provide evidence for new particle physics, such as Supersymmetry. After reviewing some of the evidence for dark matter and the WIMP hypothesis, I will describe the search we are conducting to detect these particles using phonon-mediated particle detectors housed in a low-radioactive 20-milli-Kelvin environment 2000 feet below ground. I will also briefly discuss our future plans to build a new experiment with a factor of 10 further sensitivity, which is the first phase of a ton-scale experiment named SuperCDMS.