UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

Danielle Speller, Yale University

“Low Temperature Searches for Physics Beyond the Standard Model”

The standard model of particle physics provides a useful framework for understanding the known particles and their interactions, and heavily informs our understanding of early universe cosmology. Nevertheless, key questions remain unanswered, including the nature of dark matter and the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry.

New developments in quantum measurement technologies and the maturation of low-noise cryogenic techniques allow us to directly and sensitively explore low-energy astrophysical and laboratory interactions, addressing these questions and others with enhanced searches for new particles and rare decays. In particular, dark matter and rare-event searches benefit from these advancements in technology.

The CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) Experiment is a ton-scale, 988-bolometer array located deep underground in Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS). CUORE is designed to search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) of 130-Te, a lepton number violating process that could shed light on the asymmetry between matter and antimatter and point toward new physics. Another search, the Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion CDM (HAYSTAC) is a microwave cavity experiment sensitive to significant regions of the cosmologically favored mass range for an axion dark matter candidate. HAYSTAC also serves as a pathfinder experiment for the application of new technologies to axion searches, and is now entering its second phase of operation. I will discuss the status of both experiments, the recent upgrades to HAYSTAC for phase II, and the ongoing advancements of these exciting searches for physics beyond the standard model.