Simulations of cosmogenic muon showers in the Soudan cavern
My current work involves propagation of cosmogenic muons through half a mile of greenstone and tracking of the associated showers incident on a veto shield array in the CDMS experimental hall at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. In particular, I'm benchmarking the performance of a neutron multiplicity meter to be installed in the Soudan Low Background Counting Facility, which will be used to probe the neutron background at that depth, a thorough understanding of which is vital to our ability to correctly hold ourselves to the "zero background" standard we've set for our blind analyses.
Analysis of phonon pulse data fit in the time-domain
My analysis work has been focused on the quality of phonon pulse fits, leading to the development of a cut based on the χ2 values of fits to phonon sensor traces from our DAQ system. I've also been using timing parameters from the fit to make a multidimensional cut to reject recoil events on the surface of a detector that we might otherwise mistakenly identify as WIMPs.
