Whither WIMPs - CDMS, DAMA and the search for 30% of the missing mass of the Universe

by Richard Gaitskell (UC Berkeley, USA)

Monday 17 Jul 2000, 16:30 → 16:45 Europe/Zurich

500/1-001 - Main Auditorium (CERN)

I will discuss the very recently announced results from the CDMS (Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, Berkeley/Stanford) and DAMA (Rome/Gran Sasso) Experiments. Both experiments are involved in looking for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which may be the dominant Cold Dark Matter component in the Universe. The creation of these particles about 1 ns after the Big Bang at cosmologically interesting abundance is well motivated by Supersymmetry. The DAMA experiment now identifies a 4 sigma positive signal for WIMPs. In contrast the CDMS experiment, which is now more sensitive to scalar-coupled WIMPs than DAMA, reports no signal at the same significance level. I will consider the details of the experiments, and suggest how this conundrum may be resolved.

Organiser(s): Japser Kirkby / EP Division

Note: Tea & coffee will be served at 16.00 hrs.