This award supports research in Elementary Particle Physics by Dr. Barbara J. Neuhauser, a Presidential Young Investigator, San Francisco State University, CA. The aim of the research in the development of superconducting detectors for weakly interacting non baryonic particles which may form the "dark matter" of the universe. Since the identification of dark matter particles depends upon the development of detectors with a lower threshold of sensitivity than are offered by the best conventional particle detectors, the use of a new type of cryogenic detector, called a silicon crystal acoustic detector (SiCAD), has been proposed. The research will consists in the development of extremely sensitive superconducting tunnel junction for use as phonon detector on this new detector. The phonons are generated by the collision of an incident particle with a nucleus or electron in a cube of ultra-pure single crystal silicon cooled at very low temperature.
