Speaker: Mike Miller, University of Washington, CENPA
Abstract: Dark Matter is one of the grand questions of our era. Composing up to 25% of our universe, its cosmological impacts and gravitational evidence appear robust. Not surprisingly, the search for direct detection via a non-gravitational force is now a massive enterprise. Only one experiment (DAMA/LIBRA) has claimed direct detection in the lab by searching for the hypothesized annual rate modulation of the Dark Matter Halo model. CoGeNT is a table top experiment that leverages novel advances in kilogram-scale germanium detectors, thus enabling the study of extremely low-energy ionization events. Armed with the world's lowest energy threshold, CoGeNT set forth to rule out some of DAMA's final hiding places only to be surprised by a statistically-limited annual modulation signal beyond that of known backgrounds. While far from a discovery of dark matter, the CoGeNT results raise important and exciting questions. We will present the latest results from CoGeNT and plans for the future.