The SuperCDMS experiment at SNOLAB

Richard Germond, Queen's University

A number of astrophysical and cosmological observations suggest that roughly 85% of the matter in the Universe is composed of dark matter, presumed to be a particle outside the standard model of particle physics. Direct detection experiments look for signatures of a dark matter particle scattering with a sensitive detector; of the different technologies used for this, cryogenic detectors are well-suited for detecting low-mass dark matter due to their low energy thresholds. The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) is a direct detection experiment that uses cryogenic semiconductor detectors instrumented with superconducting transition edge sensors. The first phase of SuperCDMS took place in the Soudan mine in Northern Minnesota, and preparations are currently underway for the next phase of the experiment at SNOLAB, near Sudbury, ON. Prior to the completion of SuperCDMS SNOLAB, the Cryogenic Underground TEst (CUTE) facility has been testing and characterizing SuperCDMS detectors underground at SNOLAB since 2019. The low background of the CUTE facility in combination with the excellent energy resolution of SuperCDMS detectors could allow for competitive dark matter searches to be performed. In this talk I will describe the detection principle and setup of the SuperCDMS experiment, along with dark matter search results from SuperCDMS Soudan and sensitivity projections for SuperCDMS SNOLAB. Afterwards, I will describe the main features of the CUTE facility and discuss some results from the testing of SuperCDMS detectors at CUTE.

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