Open Collections

Searching for low-mass dark matter with SuperCDMS Soudan detectors

University of British Columbia

SuperCDMS is a direct-detection dark matter (DM) experiment that uses cryogenically cooled germanium and silicon detectors to search for interactions between DM particles and detector nuclei, and in this thesis I describe my contributions to the experiment. I start with a brief review of DM and motivate the possibility of its detection in underground laboratories with sensitive detectors, and I review the SuperCDMS detector fundamentals. Then I focus on detector development for the future generation of the experiment, which will deploy an array of detectors at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Canada. Specifically I describe characterization of prototype detectors from surface facility testing, and discuss measurements of critical values that determine the detectors' sensitivity to DM particles, such as the baseline resolution and the phonon collection efficiency. I also describe analysis techniques developed to measure intrinsic detector noise in a high radiation environment such as a surface test facility. In the final chapters I describe a DM search analysis using four months of data from operation of SuperCDMS detectors in the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota. I discuss how a particular detector operating mode, called CDMSlite, lowers the energy threshold of the detectors in order to improve the sensitivity to low-mass DM particles. I also present new analysis techniques that optimize the sensitivity to low-mass DM particles, including noise discrimination with multivariate classifiers, instrumental background modeling, and a profile likelihood signal and background fitting approach. In this analysis we set an upper limit on the DM-nucleon scattering cross section in germanium that is a factor of 2.5 improvement over the previous CDMSlite result for a DM mass that is five times the proton rest mass.

Text

2019-02-11

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/68343

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/