The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS)

Despite the discovery of MACHO dark matter in our galactic halo, much of the inferred halo mass seems still to be missing [1]. If we assume that this missing mass is in the form of the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) predicted by supersymmetry [2], then we expect to find a flux of 107/mx cm-2 in the solar neighborhood or 104-106 cm-2 assuming the most likely mass range mx ∽ 10 - 1000 GeV and standard models of the galactic halo. These WIMPs have a total cross section for scattering on a nucleon of no more than 10-41cm2, leading to total scattering rates below 0.1 kg-1 day-1 of target mass.