Session Y6 - Cosmology, Particle Astrophysics and Gravitational Wave Astronomy.
ORAL session, Tuesday afternoon, April 23
Aztec, Albuquerque Convention Center
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment uses phonon and ionization mediated Ge and Si detectors operated below 50 mK to search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are excellent candidates for the dark matter in our universe. Since predicted WIMP event rates are well below 1 event per kg of detector material per day, achieving extremely low background rates is a central issue for this type of experiment. We discuss the most important sources of backgrounds, as well as methods to predict and suppress them. We compare our predictions to the current data of the CDMS experiment and give an estimation of the expected background rates, and thus sensitivity to dark matter particles, at the final deep site location of the experiment.