Latest Results From The CDMS-II Cold Dark Matter Search

Journal Article · Thu Sep 07 04:00:00 EDT 2006 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2355326· OSTI ID:20877533

Brink, P L; Cabrera, B; Chang, C L; Ogburn, R W; Saab, T ^[1]; Akerib, D S; Bailey, C N; Dragowsky, M R; Driscoll, D D; Hennings-Yeomans, R; Kamat, S; Perera, T A; Schnee, R W; Wang, G ^[2]; Armel-Funkhouser, M S; Daal, M; Filippini, J; Lu, A; Mandic, V; Meunier, P ^[3]

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1. Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States)
2. Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106 (United States)
3. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)

The CDMS-II collaboration's Cold Dark Matter search presently sets the most competitive exclusion limit in the world for the direct detection of the hypothesized Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that constitute the cold dark matter of the Universe. Our experiment utilizes Ge (and Si) crystals as the target detectors, each with a mass of 250 g (100 g) and cooled to 30 mK. To eliminate natural radioactive sources as background the experiment is conducted in a well-shielded environment in the Soudan Mine, Minnesota, and has been operating for the last two years. To aid in the identification of a possible WIMP-candidate event, the detectors are designed to measure both the ionization and athermal phonon signals produced by each candidate event. The athermal phonon signal is measured using superconducting aluminum films on the crystal surface connected to tungsten transition edge sensors. The latest WIMP-search results from Soudan will be presented, along with projections for the future.

• OSTI ID: 20877533
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 850; ISSN 0094-243X; ISSN APCPCS
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
ALUMINIUM
CRYSTALS
FILMS
GE SEMICONDUCTOR DETECTORS
IONIZATION
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PARTICLE IDENTIFICATION
PHONONS
RADIATION SOURCES
SI SEMICONDUCTOR DETECTORS
SIGNALS
SURFACES
TUNGSTEN