Financial Assistance for the CYGNUS 2009 Conference on Directional Dark Matter Detection; June 2009, Cambridge, MA

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This award will partially support the participation of younger scientists (graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) in the CYGNUS 2009 Conference on Directional Dark Matter Detection. It is the second in a series of meetings dedicated to the theoretical and experimental challenges surrounding directional dark matter detection. The conference will be held at MIT from June 11-13, 2009.Astrophysical observations suggest that the matter content of the Universe is dominated by nonbaryonic dark matter. Although dark matter is expected to permeate our galaxy, no dark matter particle has been unambiguously detected directly. Many groups worldwide have undertaken programs to search for the interaction of dark matter particles with baryonic matter in the laboratory. Because the interaction rates between dark matter and baryonic matter are so small, these experiments are plagued by Standard Model backgrounds. The dark matter signal, however, is astrophysical in origin, and should be separable from backgrounds if the direction of arrival is measured. This idea has prompted several international groups to pursue the development of dark matter detectors that provide directional sensitivity. The goal of the CYGNUS Conference series is to bring together the international scientific community working on both theoretical and experimental aspects of directional dark matter detection and Galactic dark matter distribution, and to coordinate efforts towards a large future directional dark matter experiment. For the Broader Impacts, all presentations will be archived and publicly available through the conference website so that many others can take advantage of the talks.