Simulations of cosmogenic muon showers in the Soudan cavern
My current Monte Carlo work involves propagation of cosmogenic muons through half a mile of greenstone and tracking of the associated electromagnetic and hadronic showers incident on a veto shield array in the Low Background Counting Facility at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. We're also benchmarking the performance of a neutron multiplicity meter installed in the LBCF, which will be used to probe the neutron background at that depth. Any rare event search involving nuclear recoils requires a thorough understanding of this background.
Analysis of CDMS-II and SuperCDMS data from Soudan
My early analysis work was focused on the quality of phonon pulse fits. I also worked on using new combinations of timing parameters from the time-domain fits to make a multidimensional cut to reject recoil events on the surface of a detector that we might otherwise mistakenly identify as WIMPs.
More recently, I've been involved with the analysis of new data from the first Supertower installed at Soudan, containing next generation detectors with increased mass and improved discrimination properties.