Background Models and Blinding Strategies in the Third Run of CDMSlite

The CDMS low ionization threshold experiment (CDMSlite) is an alternative running mode of the SuperCDMS Soudan direct dark matter experiment. This mode extends its experimental reach to low mass dark matter particles ($<$2 GeV/$c^2$) while sacrificing its ability to discriminate between nuclear and electron recoil events. In the previous two runs of CDMSlite, the analysis has been background-limited and un-blind. For the third and final run of CDMSlite, the particle backgrounds have been modelled to improve sensitivity, and artificial events (`salt’) have been added into the data as a blinding scheme. We present these techniques and their application to the CDMSlite data.