Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Supercdms: Energy Calibration Of A Ge Hv Particle Detector, Salamong Xiong, Vuk Mandic, Matthew Fritts, Nicholas Mast, Jacob Nelson

Macalester Journal of Physics and Astronomy

The goal of the SuperCDMS collaboration is to directly detect dark matter. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are potential candidates. To detect WIMPs, it is important to be able to predict how a Ge/Si particle detector will respond to a dark matter signal. In particular, it is necessary to calibrate the recoil energy measured by these detectors. This paper presents evidence for dark matter, a description of the detector operation, and procedures used to analyze measured data from a SuperCDMS-HV Ge particle detector using Am-241 and a PuBe neutron source. Due to high event rate, criteria were developed to remove …