What is dark matter and why the universe
behaves in the way it behaves
is one of the big open questions that
has
actually no good answer right now, we
don't really know much of what
dark matter is made of. My name is Javier
Tiffenberg and i'm an associate scientist
at Fermilab
what i do at Fermilab is essentially to
try to develop new kinds of sensors that
are extremely extremely sensitive
and then we use those sensors to answer
important questions in physics like what
is dark matter or what's the true nature
of neutrinos
or other things about the quantum world
i work in many experiments related to
ccds
a ccd is essentially a sensor that can
be used to detect many kinds of
particles
they are mostly used as imaging
detectors to form an image
in digital cameras in that case they are
detecting photons that are the particles
that make up light
the skipper ccd is very similar to a
regular ccd
with one important difference that is
the ccd is
a perfect ccd in the sense that it has
no noise
so whatever single piece of light or
single photon that gets to the ccd
you will record it and you will only
record that and you will never generate
noise
skipper ccd can be used as a very
sensitive particle detector
so whenever a particle travels through
the sensor it produces
some what we call ionization that is the
it deposits energy
and then that produces some electrons
that we can record
that's the way all the digital cameras
work but
that not only happens when light goes
through the ccd or the sensor
it also happens when other particles go
through this like
electrons neurons protons cosmic rays
and many many other things
so what we are trying to do with these
ccds that are extremely sensitive and
have no noise
is to take the darkest pictures ever and
to see
in these pictures the interactions of
some exotic particles like
dark matter or some very elusive
particles like neutrinos
the skipper ccd opens a new window in
looking for dark matter
because it allows us to look for very
light dark matter candidates that we
weren't
able to look for before what i like
about working at fermilab
is that essentially whatever engineering
problem you can think of
someone at fermilab has already solved
it so
you just need to find the right person
so
having the the opportunity to interact
with all these people that
have this a huge amount of experience in
many many different areas and that they
are able to produce
and solve problems that you didn't even
think that that might exist
that that's the best thing about working
at Fermilab
