Carson George

There is a high degree of evidence supporting the existence of dark matter, and its exact composition is of particular interest, as it could alter the Standard Model of physics. The SuperCDMs SNOLAB experiment aims to detect dark matter particles that elastically interact with the nuclei located in the detectors, with detection sensitivity orders of magnitude better than previous versions. Possible dark matter interactions are found through the nuclear recoil energy detected. However, interactions at energy levels this low are extremely hard to measure. Therefore, the process of thermal neutron calibration is used. In this process, the unique cascading energy spectrum released following neutron capture is analyzed. Through this data, the number of energy levels a nucleus passes through can be found and simulated. However, a large amount of the data collected is simply incident interactions from background sources. Therefore, this insignificant data must be filtered out. The location of each event can tell us a lot about the source of the signal. Thus, the exact location of each interaction is important. In order to find this, the detectors are placed in a helium dilution fridge, with a radioactive source acting in place of potential dark matter incident events. Through analyzing the signals from the multiple channels across the crystal surface of the detectors, and taking the ratio of each signal with respect to its position, a reconstruction algorithm can be produced to characterize the exact position of each incident. However, the exact event reconstruction algorithm is still unknown. A 2D source mover, equipped with a focused radioactive source, was mounted inside the fridge in order to control the event location, however, its controlled movement has proven to be unreliable.