Search for low-mass dark matter with superCDMS Soudan and study of shorted electric field configurations in CDMS detectors
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The area of dark matter is one of the most interesting and exciting topics in physics today. Experiments such as SuperCDMS are built to detect dark matter in the lab by looking for low-energy nuclear recoils produced by collisions between dark matter particles and atoms in terrestrial detectors. SuperCDMS Soudan is particularly well-suited to follow up on possible hints of low-mass dark matter seen by other recent experiments because of its low thresholds and excellent background discrimination. Analyzing SuperCDMS Soudan data to look for low-mass dark matter comes with particular challenges because of the low signal-to-noise very near threshold. However, with a detailed background model developed by scaling high-energy events down into the low-energy signal region, SuperCDMS Soudan produced world-leading limits on the existence of low-mass dark matter. However, a few SuperCDMS Soudan detectors experienced cold hardware problems that can affect the data collected. Of particular interest is one detector considered for the low-mass WIMP search that has one of its charge electrodes shorted to chassis ground. The data collected by the shorted detector may have been compromised since an electrode shorted to ground will modify the electric field in the detector. A new model of the expected backgrounds in the low-mass WIMP search is developed using the SuperCDMS Detector Monte Carlo to try to explain how the short may have affected the data collected. Finally, the consequences of a new effective field theory of dark matter-nucleon scattering are examined in the context of current and future dark matter direct detection experiments.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Schneck, Kristiana E |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Physics. |
| Primary advisor | Cabrera, Blas |
| Thesis advisor | Cabrera, Blas |
| Thesis advisor | Partridge, Richard, 1952- |
| Thesis advisor | Wechsler, Risa H. (Risa Heyrman) |
| Advisor | Wechsler, Risa H. (Risa Heyrman) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kristiana E. Schneck. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Kristiana E. Schneck
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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