• DOI:10.1126/science.1186112
• Corpus ID: 2517711

Dark Matter Search Results from the CDMS II Experiment

@article{Ahmed2010DarkMS,
  title={Dark Matter Search Results from the CDMS II Experiment},
  author={Zeeshan Ahmed and D. S. Akerib and Sebastian Arrenberg and C. N. Bailey and D. Balakishiyeva and L. Baudis and Daniel A. Bauer and Paul L. Brink and Tobias Bruch and R. Bunker and Blas Cabrera and David O. Caldwell and Jodi Cooley and Priscilla Brooks Cushman and Miguel Daal and Fritz Dejongh and Michael Raymond Dragowsky and L. Duong and Scott Fallows and E. Figueroa-Feliciano and J. P. Filippini and Matthew C Fritts and Sunil Golwala and Darren Grant and J. Hall and Raul Hennings-Yeomans and Scott A. Hertel and Donald J. Holmgren and Lauren Hsu and Martin E. Huber and Oleg Kamaev and M. Kiveni and Marek S. Kos and Steven W. Leman and Rupak Mahapatra and Vuk Mandic and Kevin A. McCarthy and Nader Mirabolfathi and David C. Moore and H. Nelson and R. Walter Ogburn and Arran Phipps and Matthew Pyle and X. Qiu and Erik J. Ramberg and Wolfgang Rau and Angela Reisetter and Tarek Saab and Bernard Sadoulet and Joel Sander and Richard W. Schnee and Dennis N. Seitz and Bruno Serfass and Kyle M. Sundqvist and M Tarka and Patrick Wikus and S. Yellin and J. Yoo and Betty A. Young and J. Zhang},
  journal={Science},
  year={2010},
  volume={327},
  pages={1619 - 1621}
}

• Z. Ahmed, D. Akerib, +57 authors J. Zhang
• Published 1 December 2009
• Physics
• Science

News from the Dark Side? Dark matter is thought to represent 85% of all matter in the universe and to have been responsible for the formation of structure in the early universe, but its nature is still a mystery. Ahmed et al. (p. 1619, published online 11 February; see the Perspective by Lang) describe the results from the completed Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment, which searched for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP). Two candidate signals were observed, whereas only one background event was expected. The probability of having two or more events from the background would have been 23%. The results of this analysis cannot be interpreted with confidence as evidence for WIMP interactions, but, at the same time, neither event can be ruled out as representing signal. Details of possible, but unlikely, detection events produced by dark matter are reported. Astrophysical observations indicate that dark matter constitutes most of the mass in our universe, but its nature remains unknown. Over the past decade, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment has provided world-leading sensitivity for the direct detection of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. The final exposure of our low-temperature germanium particle detectors at the Soudan Underground Laboratory yielded two candidate events, with an expected background of 0.9 ± 0.2 events. This is not statistically significant evidence for a WIMP signal. The combined CDMS II data place the strongest constraints on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent scattering cross section for a wide range of WIMP masses and exclude new parameter space in inelastic dark matter models.