Physical Society Colloquium

Hidden Worlds: Low Energy Rare Event Searches for Physics Beyond the Standard Model

Danielle Speller

Department of Physics
Yale University

Understanding the nature of matter and mass is the motivation for a number of outstanding questions in physics and astronomy. In recent decades, physicists have undertaken a variety of searches for new and unusual interactions that would extend our understanding and point toward viable extensions of our current models. In particular, dark matter and rare-event searches benefit from the maturation of several technologies that allow us to directly and sensitively explore low-energy astrophysical and laboratory interactions.

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 ¹³⁰Te, a lepton number violating process that could shed light on the asymmetry between matter and antimatter and point toward new physics. 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 for the application of new technologies to axion searches, and is now entering its second phase of operation. I will discuss new results from CUORE, the current work of HAYSTAC Phase II, and the ongoing advancements of these exciting searches for physics beyond the standard model.