CAP Lecture: Dark Matter: How to Hunt for the Unknown

Synopsis

The quest for understanding the dark matter which pervades our universe has been proceeding for many years and is approaching a momentous time. The existence of this elusive matter is now widely accepted, and considerable experimental effort is directed at deducing its fundamental properties. This talk will focus on results and prospects from two experiments using complementary search techniques. The first is the PICO experiment, a superheated liquid detector at SNOLAB which recently published world-leading results. The second is the IceCube/DeepCore experiment situated in the deep ice at the South Pole and using neutrinos to look for the annihilation signal. Along with the future of these experiments, the imminent challenges to all direct detection experiments will also be discussed.