Session B10 - Searches for New Particles I.
FOCUS session, Saturday morning, April 28
Room 3, Renaissance Hotel$
It has long been suspected that nonbaryonic cold dark matter makes up a significant component of the energy density of the universe. Observations over the last few years have solidified this idea and make the fairly precise prediction that about 1/3 of the closure density is provided by this form of matter. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are an excellent candidate for nonbaryonic cold dark matter, motivated by both particle physics and cosmology. I present some of these arguments and discuss recent results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), an experiment that searches for scattering of WIMPs with normal matter using novel particle detectors that discriminate WIMP-induced nuclear recoils from background-induced electron recoils. CDMS data exclude new parameter space for WIMPs with masses above 10 GeV and appear to be inconsistent with a WIMP interpretation of the annual-modulation signal observed by the DAMA experiment.