Collaborative Research: The SuperCDMS at SNOLAB Science Program

The goal of the SuperCDMS Collaboration is to directly detect galactic dark matter and in so doing address the following questions: what is the particle nature of dark matter, what are its astrophysical properties, and how does it relate to the Standard Model? In pursuit of this goal, the Collaboration is nearing completion on the construction of a new experiment, SuperCDMS SNOLAB, sited in SNOLAB, Sudbury, Canada. The advanced cryogenic detectors being used by the experiment have unprecedented sensitivity to nuclear recoil interactions from dark matter. The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment will have sensitivity to dark matter interactions down to a cross section where solar neutrino interactions with the detector become a limiting background (the so-called “neutrino fog”). The SuperCDMS collaboration, and the university groups supported by this award, will complete the commissioning of the experiment and will subsequently transition to data acquisition and analysis. The data analysis work fill focus on the following objectives: Creating a comprehensive detector response model, analyze the nuclear recoil ionization yield data produced at the NEXUS facility, deliver science results based on the O(GeV) Nuclear Recoil, O(MeV) Electron Recoil dark matter channels from the HV detectors, and train the next generation of scientists through their contributions to the SuperCDMS science program. The science activities of the collaboration are planned to produce a combination of the most timely and sensitive dark matter results, from the different search channels, over the period of this award. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.