Seminar: Shedding Light on Dark Matter using Cryogenic Detectors
Evidence from multiple indirect measurements implies that 80% of the mass in the universe is dark, non-baryonic and hence is composed of a new type of undiscovered particles. I will describe why Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are the most popular candidate for the dark matter and describe how WIMPs would interact in a detector. I will then describe a leading experiment attempting to directly detect WIMP interactions, the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) and present results.
Dr. Sander is interested in finding evidence of new physics. Towards that end, he is a primary investigator on the SuperCDMS collaboration looking to directly detect dark matter. He is also working on developing new detection techniques for the next generation of rare event searches.