Special Particle-Astrophysics Seminar
(bring your lunch)

Constraints on low-mass dark matter from CDMS-II and the development of highly-multiplexed next-generation detectors

David Moore

Caltech

Data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS-II) have been reanalyzed to give increased sensitivity to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with masses below 10 GeV/c². Constraints on light WIMPs from an analysis of the CDMS-II spectrum with a 2 keV recoil-energy threshold as well as a search for annual modulation in the observed low-energy event rate will be presented. These results directly constrain low-mass WIMP interpretations of the potential signals reported by the DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT and CRESST experiments. Progress developing radio-frequency multiplexed detectors for next-generation rare-event searches will also be discussed, including the first demonstration of energy and position-resolved phonon-mediated particle detection using microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs).