The total "visible" matter in the universe, i.e. what we can see with our eyes or with a telescope, makes up only ~5% of the total contents of the universe. The remaining 95% is made of two unknown components called dark energy and dark matter. Although the existence of dark matter has been well supported through cosmological evidence, dark matter has never been detected. What dark matter is and its properties remain a mystery and physicists have been trying to answer this very question for decades. I work in a direct dark matter search experiment called SuperCDMS which looks for signatures of dark matter interactions with the atoms in semiconductor crystals held at sub-zero temperatures (close to -273C). The next generation of the experiment, called SuperCDMS SNOLAB is expected to start taking science data soon, in a facility in Sudbury Canada (called SNOLAB) which is located 2km underground. I'm currently involved in analyzing data that comes from our test facility (called CUTE) in SNOLAB which helps us understand the backgrounds and detector performance in the mine and if everything is well understood look for dark matter signals.
Currently, I am an undergraduate physics student and Lab Assistant at SD Mines. I work in the Schnee Group at Mines, under Dr. Richard Schnee. My work mostly focuses on the mitigation of problematic backgrounds for sensitive rare-event searches. This encompasses a few different things. First, I perform analysis of Radon-222 emanation from materials used in the LZ and SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiments. I also do 210Po alpha characterization on data from SuperCDMS Soudan.
I do not have any published work as of May 2024. If you wish to view my unpublished reports and symposium talks, please view at the links below:
Silicone Sealants 222Rn Emanation Measurement for SuperCDMS SNOLAB
2024 SD Mines Student Research Symposium Talk
For correspondence, you can contact me by email at h.ryott.glayzer@ryott.gay
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