SuperCDMS

Observations of galaxies, galaxy clusters, distant supernovae, and the cosmic microwave background radiation reveal that around 85% of the Universe’s matter is composed of a new form of matter that does not emit or absorb light. This dark matter is believed to be comprised of elementary particles that lie beyond the Standard Model of particle physics and whose interactions with ordinary matter are extremely weak. The detection and identification of dark matter is one of the most exciting open problems in our current understanding of the Universe.

The SuperCDMS Collaboration is one of several collaborations performing experiments to directly detect dark matter particles. Employing cryogenic Germanium and silicon targets, the detectors are designed to be sensitive to the ionisation and phonons that would result from dark matter interactions. This allows us to discriminate a potential dark matter signal from other sources of background.