Jul 7 – 11, 2025
America/Toronto timezone

Contribution List

148 out of 148 displayed
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  1. Prof. Hitoshi Murayama (University of California Berkeley (US))
    7/7/25, 9:30 AM

    Given that all matter around us are composite objects, dark matter may well be composite. I
    describe the simplest version yet of a composite dark matter as dark pions coupled via the
    baryon number gauge boson as the dark photon portal.

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  2. Tracy Slatyer
    7/7/25, 10:00 AM

    Upcoming gamma-ray telescopes offer the prospect of sensitivity to the canonical thermal-relic annihilation cross section up to mass scales of tens of TeV. I will discuss new precise predictions for high-energy gamma-ray signals from the classic "minimal dark matter" benchmark models, including bound-state formation and resummation of large logarithms, in the case where the dark matter...

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  3. Prof. Mariangela Lisanti (Princeton University)
    7/7/25, 11:00 AM

    The hypothesis of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) has been confirmed on the largest scales of the Universe and must now be stress-tested on sub-galactic scales. Many well-motivated and generic alternatives to CDM can leave spectacular signatures on precisely these scales, affecting the evolution of galaxies as well as their population statistics. Excitingly, over the course of the next decade, a...

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  4. Aaron Vincent (Queen's University)
    7/7/25, 11:30 AM

    Stars are large, plentiful and the Universe provides them to us for free. They provide us with unique laboratories to test fundamental physics at high densities and temperatures, and their large volumes potentially give us access to very rare processes. While stars have been used for decades to probe fundamental physics, they still offer new exciting avenues to search for...

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  5. Tammi Chowdhury (University of Manitoba)
    7/7/25, 1:30 PM

    Cosmic Inflation provides clues to the conditions of the early universe and the highest energy scales our universe has reached. Non-thermal relics can be produced through gravitational particle production, providing dark matter candidates or unstable particles that decay into the baryon asymmetry. A minimal framework that incorporates inflation into the Standard Model is Higgs Inflation, where...

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  6. Kristjan Muursepp (NICPB, Tallinn and LNF-INFN, Frascati)
    7/7/25, 1:30 PM

    In my presentation, I will investigate the interplay between dynamical symmetry breaking mechanisms and dark matter. More precisely, I will focus on several important details of the recently proposed Higgs-dilaton model augmented with a dark matter candidate inducing quantum corrections. In contrast to the previous studies, I will consider the effects of the renormalisation group improvement...

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  7. Ran Budnik
    7/7/25, 1:30 PM

    The XENONnT experiment is designed for the direct detection of WIMP Dark Matter through its scattering off atomic nuclei in a liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chamber (TPC). The detector, located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy, holds a total of 8.6 tonnes of xenon, of which 5.9 tonnes actively instrumented within the TPC. Searching for extremely rare interactions,...

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  8. Dr Paolo Panci (Universita & INFN Pisa (IT))
    7/7/25, 1:50 PM

    In this talk, I aim to present the phenomenology of Electroweak (EW) multiplets as potential Dark Matter (DM) candidates in the coming years. I will begin by discussing the thermal production mechanism in the early Universe and providing an overview of the current phenomenological landscape in the search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). It is worth emphasizing that WIMPs...

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  9. RAJESH MONDAL (IIT Guwahati)
    7/7/25, 1:50 PM

    Despite having important cosmological implications, the reheating phase is believed to play a crucial role in both cosmology and particle physics model building. Conventional reheating models primarily rely on arbitrary coupling between the inflaton and massless fields, which lacks robust predictions. In this talk, I will discuss our recently proposed novel reheating mechanism where the...

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  10. Prof. Matthew Szydagis (UAlbany SUNY)
    7/7/25, 1:50 PM

    The LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration operates a 7-tonne active mass, two-phase xenon Time Projection Chamber surrounded by multiple anti-coincidence vetoes. In its search for the elusive dark matter, the LZ experiment involves researchers from 6 countries and 4 continents. It is located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. LZ seeks standard Weakly Interacting Massive...

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  11. Dr Jongkuk Kim (Chung-Ang University)
    7/7/25, 2:10 PM

    We study vector dark matter (DM) production with Higgs-portal type interactions in the scenarios with a low reheating temperature which can be realized by a prolonged decay of the inflaton after inflation. We take the reheating temperature to be large enough to match the observations in Standard Cosmology such as Big Bang Nucleosynthesis but small enough below the DM mass for the DM...

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  12. Prof. Vahid Kamali (BASU & McGill)
    7/7/25, 2:10 PM

    This study investigates the alignment of theoretical and observational Cosmic Microwave Back-
    ground (CMB) power spectra, focusing on the high-dissipative regime of the most reliable effective
    theory of inflation. Using marginalized posterior distributions, we analyze parameter spaces con-
    strained by our model and compare them to observational data from the Planck 2018 results....

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  13. Daniel Marcantonio (U. Melbourne)
    7/7/25, 2:10 PM

    The Belle and Belle II experiment have collected samples of $e^+e^-$
    collision data at centre-of-mass energies near the $\Upsilon(nS)$
    resonances. These data have constrained kinematics and low
    multiplicity, which allow searches for dark sector particles in the mass
    range from a few MeV to 10 GeV. Using a 426 fb$^{-1}$ sample collected
    by Belle II, we search for inelastic dark matter...

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  14. Dr Junsei Tokuda (McGill university)
    7/7/25, 2:30 PM

    Quantum fluctuations of the metric are amplified during inflation, producing the macroscopic perturbations observed in the late universe. To clarify whether these fluctuations retain their quantum coherence, we investigate the decoherence of superhorizon modes induced by gravitational nonlinearities. We show that cubic gravitational couplings, constrained by the soft theorem, lead to IR and UV...

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  15. Colin James Moore (Max-Planck-Institut für Physik)
    7/7/25, 2:30 PM

    CRESST-III (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) installed at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, is looking to directly detect dark matter particles scattering off CaWO4 target nuclei in cryogenic detectors. Thanks to its energy threshold O(30 eV), CRESST-III is particularly suitable in probing sub-GeV DM masses. This contribution presents an overview of CRESST-III,...

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  16. Tommaso Sassi (University of Padua, INFN Padua)
    7/7/25, 2:30 PM

    If dark matter is blind to standard model gauge interactions, the dark sector might not be totally secluded but connect to the visible sector via the introduction of portal interactions. In this talk, I will discuss a novel scenario where an axion-like particle acts as mediator between the SM and a complex scalar singlet dark matter candidate. The identification of physical couplings crucially...

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  17. Dr Matthew Stukel (SNOLAB)
    7/7/25, 2:50 PM

    Over the past twenty-eight years, the DAMA/LIBRA experiment has observed an annual modulation signal that is consistent with a dark matter explanation. Unfortunately, the signal is contradicted by the null results of numerous experiments utilizing different target materials. In order to perform a truly model-independent investigation of the DAMA/LIBRA result, a study with the same target...

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  18. Prof. Dong-han Yeom (Pusan National University)
    7/7/25, 2:50 PM

    What happens if our universe was created from an Euclidean instanton? The no-boundary proposal is not the unique choice; instead, a more natural option is to introduce Euclidean wormholes, but as a result, we need to accept that our universe was indeed an outcome of a pair creation. Invoking the Klebanov-Susskind-Banks Euclidean wormhole as a bridge, we investigate the power spectrum and the...

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  19. Dr Chung-Lin SHAN
    7/7/25, 2:50 PM

    In this talk, I will revisit some fundamental well-known knowledge in direct Dark Matter detection physics, including: (1) the general expression for the differential event rate for elastic WIMP-nucleus scattering, (2) the minimal-required incoming velocity of incident WIMPs that can deposit the given energy in the detector, (3) the spatial distribution of the nuclear recoil angle, and provide...

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  20. Dr Jerome Quintin (University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute)
    7/7/25, 3:40 PM

    Recent observations suggest dark energy might have been of phantom type in the past, implying violation of the null energy condition (NEC). It is a well-known fact that quantum states can violate the NEC, but at the same time, it is a challenge to come up with theoretically robust and stable quantum field theories that could behave as phantom dark energy. In fact, there should be a theoretical...

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  21. Cosmin Ilie (Colgate University)
    7/7/25, 3:40 PM

    Launched at the end of 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already begun to revolutionize our view of the cosmic dawn era. Specifically, it discovered an unexpectedly large number of extremely bright objects in the sky from the early Universe, whose light was emitted more than thirteen billion years ago. If these objects are interpreted as some of the first galaxies ever...

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  22. Prof. Keith A. Olive (University of Minnesota (US))
    7/7/25, 3:40 PM

    Without assuming instantaneous reheating, there is an extended period
    and several particle process which lead to the production of Dark Matter.
    These are reviewed and compared.

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  23. Liliya Williams (University of Minnesota)
    7/7/25, 4:00 PM

    Observations of intermediate mass and dwarf galaxies are hard to reconcile with the results of numerical simulations of cold collisionless dark matter (CDM). The most notable problems are (i) the core-cusp problem, or the inability of DM-only simulations to reproduce flat density profiles, i.e., cores, in the centers of dwarf galaxies, (ii) the diversity of the central density profile slopes,...

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  24. Duarte Miguel da Silva Feiteira (University of Helsinki)
    7/7/25, 4:00 PM

    Gravitational particle production provides an ever-present background in non-thermal dark matter studies. I discuss the correspondence between the Starobinsky and Bogolyubov approaches to the problem of inflationary particle production, and derive strong constraints on frameworks with scalar dark relics.

    (Based on D. Feiteira, O. Lebedev, arXiv:2503.14652)

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  25. Guillaume Payeur (McGill University)
    7/7/25, 4:00 PM

    In light of recent observations by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), we study evidence for thawing quintessence over a cosmological constant as dark energy, with emphasis on the effect of the choice of priors. Working with a parametrization for the equation of state parameter motivated by the theory, we analyse the DESI BAO data jointly with Planck 2018 and Pantheon+ supernovae...

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  26. Yann MAMBRINI
    7/7/25, 4:20 PM

    We will review different mechanisms for dark matter production in the early Universe, with gravitational sources. From the graviton exchange, to the perturbation during inflation and the PBH decay.

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  27. Bianca-Iulia Ciocan (Centre de recherche astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL))
    7/7/25, 4:20 PM

    Disk-halo decompositions of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at redshifts z > 1 typically focus on massive galaxies with stellar masses exceeding log(M⋆/M⊙) > 10.
    In this study, we analyse the dark matter (DM) halo properties of 127 intermediate-redshift (0.3 < z < 1.5) SFGs down to low stellar masses (7 < log(M⋆/M⊙) < 11). To do so, we use integral field unit observations from the MUSE Hubble...

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  28. ROBERT Brandenberger (McGill University)
    7/7/25, 4:20 PM

    The recent DESI results provide increasing evidence that the density of dark energy is time- dependent. I will recall why, from the point of view of fundamental theory, this result should not be surprising.

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  29. Pierce Giffin
    7/7/25, 4:40 PM

    If the dark sector possesses long-range self-interactions, these interactions can source dramatic collective instabilities even in astrophysical settings where the collisional mean free path is long. Here, we focus on the specific case of dark matter halos composed of a dark $U(1)$ gauge sector undergoing a dissociative cluster merger. We study this by performing the first dedicated...

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  30. Patrick Adolf
    7/7/25, 4:40 PM

    Motivated by the work of Cohen, Kaplan and Nelson (CKN) in which the authors argue that gravity resticts the range of validity of a QFT, we consider a time-dependent dark energy density, scaling proportional to the squared Hubble parameter $H(z)$.
    These models are of particular interest in the light of the recent data release of the DESI collaboration, since the measurements show an...

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  31. Francisco Barreto Basave (Instituto de Física, UNAM)
    7/7/25, 4:40 PM

    We investigate the production of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in the early Universe, focusing on the reheating epoch. Using an inflationary potential approximated by a quartic power law near its minimum, we analyze how inflaton self-interactions trigger exponential growth of inhomogeneities in the field resulting in the fragmentation of the condensate. We study the impact of...

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  32. Pierros Ntelis (Independent Research Affiliation, Formerly at Aix-Marseille University)
    7/7/25, 5:00 PM

    In the era of upcoming cosmic surveys, the bright sky will be more revealing than ever, allowing us to disentangle the most intriguing mysteries of the origins, content, and evolution of the universe. In this talk, I will highlight the fundamentals of extended gravity theories, and I will focus on the quintessence, probabilistic gravity, and functors of action theories (FAT). I will emphasize...

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  33. Marcos Alejandro García García (Instituto de Física, UNAM)
    7/7/25, 5:00 PM

    The excitation of scalar dark matter during inflation may result in large isocurvature perturbations, which can be avoided by inducing a sizable effective dark matter mass during the inflationary phase. This can be achieved by a direct coupling to the inflaton, through a nonminimal coupling to the curvature, or by a large bare mass. Notably, when the isocurvature is suppressed at CMB scales, a...

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  34. Zihui Wang
    7/7/25, 5:00 PM

    We investigate the astrophysical consequences of an attractive long-range interaction between dark matter and baryonic matter. Our study highlights the role of this interaction in inducing dynamical friction between dark matter and stars, which can significantly influence the evolution of compact stellar systems. Using the star cluster in Eridanus II as a case study, we derive a new stringent...

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  35. Evan McDonough
    7/8/25, 9:00 AM

    The range of possible masses of particle dark matter spans over many orders of
    magnitude. The extremes of the mass range -- so-called ''superheavy'' and ''ultralight'' dark
    matter candidates -- are increasingly attracting attention due to their novel phenomenology and
    new developments in production mechanisms. In this talk I will discuss the complementary nature
    of superheavy and...

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  36. Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (University of New Hampshire)
    7/8/25, 9:30 AM

    Over the last decade, one of the most popular solutions to the dark matter problem has been a hypothetical class of particles known as axions or axion-like particles. In this talk, I will discuss why the axion is such an attractive candidate and also explain the challenges we face in determining whether axions are the dark matter and which axion(s) are the dark matter. I will highlight results...

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  37. Elisa Gouvea Mauricio Ferreira (Kavli IPMU)
    7/8/25, 10:00 AM

    The nature of dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Among the many possible candidates, one of the most well-motivated class of models and leading candidate is the ultra-light dark matter (ULDM). ULDM represents the lightest possible dark matter candidates and exhibits wave-like behavior on galactic scales, offering a unique opportunity to probe its properties through...

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  38. Laura Baudis (University of Zurich (CH))
    7/8/25, 11:00 AM

    The fundamental nature of dark matter remains one of the central open questions in physics. A leading hypothesis is that dark matter consists of new elementary particles, whose masses and interaction cross sections span a vast parameter space. Among the various detection technologies, liquid xenon detectors have emerged as the most sensitive for dark matter particles with masses above a few...

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  39. Seyda Ipek
    7/8/25, 11:30 AM

    In MSSM with a global U(1) symmetry, the gauginos are psuedo-Dirac particles. The psuedo-Dirac bino can play the role of right-handed neutrinos and generate the light neutrino masses through an inverse seesaw mechanism. In this scenario, the lightness of the neutrino masses is governed by the ratio of the gravitino mass and the messenger scale between the SM and the supersymmetric sector. For...

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  40. Sandra Robles (Fermilab)
    7/8/25, 1:30 PM

    We propose the first method for water Cherenkov detectors to constrain GeV-scale dark matter (DM) below the solar evaporation mass. While previous efforts have highlighted the Sun and Earth as DM capture targets, we demonstrate that Jupiter is a viable target. Jupiter's unique characteristics, such as its lower core temperature and significant gravitational potential, allow it to capture and...

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  41. William DeRocco (University of Maryland, College Park)
    7/8/25, 1:30 PM

    Primordial black holes (PBHs) are a well-motivated candidate for dark matter that may constitute a sub-fraction of the dark sector in the Earth-mass range. The strongest observational probe of this population is through gravitational microlensing, an effect in which the bending of light by a massive object results in the apparent transient magnification of a distant source. While ground-based...

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  42. Yi Yi Zhong (The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia;   ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, Australia)
    7/8/25, 1:30 PM

    SABRE is an international collaboration that will operate similar particle de-
    tectors in the Northern (SABRE North) and Southern Hemispheres (SABRE
    South). This innovative approach distinguishes possible dark matter signals
    from seasonal backgrounds, a pioneering strategy only possible with a southern
    hemisphere experiment. SABRE South is located at the Stawell Underground
    Physics...

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  43. Giorgio Busoni (Adelaide University)
    7/8/25, 1:50 PM

    It is well-established that Dark Matter can be captured and accumulate in celestial objects. While this phenomenon has been extensively studied for the Sun and Earth, recent interest has shifted towards compact objects such as White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars. In this presentation, I will discuss two recent results related to these objects.

    For Neutron Stars, we consider Dark Matter...

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  44. Dr Juan Carlos Hidalgo (UNAM Mexico)
    7/8/25, 1:50 PM

    We present the formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) from the gravitational collapse of inhomogeneities in a scalar field dominated universe, featuring a code that solves Einstein Equations plus the matter evolution in spherical symmetry. We focus on prospects of reheating for the scalar field potentials. We report on threshold amplitudes for the formation of PBHs, as well as...

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  45. Volker Andreas Austrup (The University of Manchester (GB))
    7/8/25, 1:50 PM

    The presence of a non-baryonic Dark Matter (DM) component in the Universe is inferred from the observation of its gravitational interaction. If Dark Matter interacts weakly with the Standard Model (SM) it could be produced at the LHC. The ATLAS Collaboration has developed a broad search program for DM candidates in final states with large missing transverse momentum produced in association...

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  46. Melissa Diamond
    7/8/25, 2:10 PM

    I present a novel mechanism for creating primordial black holes and MACHOs. A heavy dissipative dark sector can come to dominate the universe, creating an early matter dominated era prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). At this time the dark matter can form halos which persist after the phase transition back to radiation domination, and slowly collapse at late times. This leads to the...

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  47. Niklas Zimmermann (Helsinki Institute of Physics (FI))
    7/8/25, 2:10 PM

    The initiative to detect dark matter directly has been prominent for decades after the WIMP miracle was proposed. Following this, many institutions have come forward with a variety of dark matter direct detection experiments, each trying to find the possible missing particle of the universe. Most prominently, the DAMA collaboration published their results during the end of the last century,...

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  48. Alex Garcia (University of Virginia)
    7/8/25, 2:10 PM

    The detection of dark matter presents one of the greatest challenges of modern astronomy.
    Possibly one of the most promising avenues is via high energy particles created by dark matter self-annihilation events.
    These annihilation events, naturally, depend strongly on the particle physics of the dark matter, but also on the astrophysics of the Universe.
    More specifically, the small...

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  49. Audrey Fung
    7/8/25, 2:30 PM

    Paleodetection has been proposed as a competitive method for detecting dark matter and other new physics interactions, complementing conventional direct detection experiments. In this work, we utilise \trim simulations to improve the modelling of track length distributions. Our findings suggest that previous studies have overestimated the number of tracks caused by weakly interacting...

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  50. Riccardo Munini (INFN - Universita Studi Trieste)
    7/8/25, 2:30 PM

    The primary science goal of the General Anti Particle Spectrometer (GAPS) is to search for light antinuclei in cosmic rays at kinetic energies below 0.25 GeV/n, as a possible indirect dark matter signature. GAPS is a balloon-borne cosmic-ray experiment expected to be launched during the Antarctic summer season 25/26. It consists of a ten-layer silicon tracker, cooled by a novel oscillating...

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  51. Edward Wilson-Ewing (University of New Brunswick)
    7/8/25, 2:30 PM

    I will explain how corrections motivated by loop quantum gravity can be included in the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation for spherically symmetric static stars. The quantum-corrected equation has new star solutions with a Planck mass, Planck radius, and no horizon. These bound objects could form in the early universe, be an end state for an evaporating black hole, and could potentially...

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  52. Prof. Jong-Chul Park (Chungnam National University (KR))
    7/8/25, 2:50 PM

    We propose a novel method to determine the mass scale of ambient dark matter that can be generally applied to the (at least effectively) two-dimensional direct detection experiments allowing for directional observables. Due to the motions of the solar system and the Earth relative to the galactic center and the Sun, the dark-matter flux carries a directional preference. We first formulate that...

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  53. Christopher Hirata (Ohio State University)
    7/8/25, 2:50 PM

    Low-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) have re-emerged as a promising dark matter candidate. At the lowest allowed masses (of order $10^{17}$ g), the leading tool for constraining PBHs is Hawking radiation, either in gamma rays or in electrons and positrons (since the peak of the Hawking graybody spectrum is at an energy of order the electron mass). Our group is carrying out a systematic...

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  54. Sushant Yadav 2020504
    7/8/25, 3:40 PM

    The Dirac Scotogenic model provides an elegant mechanism for generating small Dirac neutrino masses at the one-loop level. A single abelian discrete $\mathcal{Z}_6$ symmetry simultaneously protects the ``Diracness'' of the neutrinos and the stability of the dark matter candidate. This symmetry originates as an unbroken subgroup of the so-called $\textit{445}$ $U(1)_{B-L}$ symmetry.
    Here, we...

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  55. Csaba Balazs (Monash University)
    7/8/25, 3:40 PM

    Phase transitions in the early universe provide a rich testing ground for fundamental symmetries and the generation of gravitational waves. In this talk, I will explore the connection between symmetry breaking, phase transitions, and the resulting gravitational wave signatures. I will present recent theoretical and numerical developments that shed light on the dynamics of these transitions,...

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  56. Claia Bryja (City College of San Francisco)
    7/8/25, 3:40 PM

    Within present observational uncertainties, the time evolution of dark
    energy discovered by DESI (2025) is consistent with a simple model in
    which the dark energy density maintains a direct dependence on the
    ${\mid \Omega - 1 \mid}$ measure of spatial curvature. This, together
    with Bousso’s (2002) conjecture that the holographic bound of the
    universe saturates at the observer’s apparent...

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  57. Andrey Shkerin
    7/8/25, 4:00 PM

    We construct the thermal bounce solution in holographic models that describes first-order phase transitions between the deconfined and confined phases in strongly-coupled gauge theories. This new, periodic Euclidean solution represents transitions that occur via thermally-assisted tunneling and interpolates between the low temperature $O(4)$-symmetric configuration and the high temperature...

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  58. Armine Amekhyan (A. I. Alikhanyan national science laboratory (Yerevan Physics Institute)" foundation)
    7/8/25, 4:00 PM

    We consider different observational effects to test modified gravity approach involving the cosmological constant in the common description of the dark matter and the dark energy. We obtain upper limits for the cosmological constant by studying the scaling relations for 12 nearby galaxy clusters, the radiated power from gravitational waves and the Tully-Fisher relation for super spiral...

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  59. Urjit Yajnik (IIT Bombay Mumbai India)
    7/8/25, 4:00 PM

    The Alternative Left-Right Model is an attractive variation of the usual Left-Right Symmetric Model because it avoids flavour-changing neutral currents, thus allowing the additional Higgs bosons in the model to be light. We show here that the model predicts several dark matter candidates naturally, through introduction of an R-parity similar to the one in supersymmetry. Dark matter candidates...

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  60. Micah Mellors
    7/8/25, 4:20 PM

    The fermion mass hierarchy of the Standard Model (SM) spans many orders of magnitude and begs for a further explanation. The Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) mechanism is a popular solution which introduces an additional $U(1)$ symmetry to the SM under which SM fermions are charged. We examine the phenomenological implications of the FN mechanism for the lepton sector in the most general way, by...

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  61. Prof. Yanou Cui (University of California, Riverside)
    7/8/25, 4:20 PM

    The stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) has recently emerged as a promising new probe of new particle physics and the dark side of the Universe. In this talk, we present well-motivated examples of SGWB sourced by the early Universe dynamics of light scalar fields with masses well below the electroweak scale. These include mechanisms such as post-inflation parametric resonance of...

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  62. Varun Muralidharan
    7/8/25, 4:20 PM

    Recent analyses from the DESI collaboration suggest that the dark energy density of the Universe may be decreasing with time, slowing the acceleration of the scale factor $a$. Typically these studies are performed assuming an ansatz for the equation of state $w(a)$. In this talk, we present simple models of a scalar quintessence potential with linear and quadratic behavior, which could be...

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  63. James Cline (McGill University, (CA))
    7/8/25, 4:40 PM

    The Dark Energy Spectrometer Instrument second data release has
    strengthened indications of evolving dark energy, possibly including
    the violation of the null energy condition $\rho > -p$. It is suggested that
    the dark energy equation of state evolved from $w < -1$ to $w > -1$,
    known as crossing the phantom divide. I will discuss
    challenges to constructing theoretical models realizing...

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  64. Linda Yuan
    7/8/25, 4:40 PM

    Atomic dark matter (ADM) models, with a minimal content of a dark proton, dark electron, and a massless dark photon, are motivated by theories such as Mirror Twin Higgs. ADM models might address the seeming tension between cold dark matter (CDM) and observations at small scales: excessive number of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way, and the cuspiness of galactic cores. ADM has been shown to...

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  65. ZHIWEI WANG
    7/8/25, 4:40 PM

    We go beyond the state-of-the-art by combining first principal lattice results and effective field theory approaches as Polyakov Loop model to explore the non-perturbative dark deconfinement-confinement phase transition and the generation of gravitational-waves in a dark Yang-Mills theory. We further include fermions with different representations in the dark sector. Employing the...

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  66. Meng-Xiang Lin (University of Pennsylvania)
    7/8/25, 5:00 PM

    The fundamental natures of dark energy and dark matter remain two of the biggest mysteries in modern cosmology. We show that a simple coupling between dark energy and dark matter can simultaneously address two distinct hints at new physics coming from cosmological observations. The first is the recent evidence from the DESI project and supernovae observations that the dark energy equation of...

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  67. Miriam Diamond
    7/9/25, 9:00 AM

    We are faced with convincing evidence that approximately a quarter of the universe is composed of something whose gravitational effects can be seen in a variety of astrophysical phenomena, but which we have been unable to detect and identify in the laboratory. The majority of physicists agree that this "dark matter" (DM) consists of as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle(s) that are not...

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  68. Ana Martina Botti (Fermilab)
    7/9/25, 9:30 AM
  69. Maxim Pospelov
    7/9/25, 10:00 AM

    Nuclear reactors are an intense source of radiation emitted in the form of
    different particles of MeV-scale energy. 
    We revisit several constraints that past and current experiments set on the light weakly coupled
    particles. We find new, more stringent
    constraints on millicharged particles and dark photons. We also consider pair-production and/or
    upscattering of light dark matter, and...

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  70. Dr Takashi Toma (Kanazawa University)
    7/9/25, 11:00 AM

    In some scenarios, the dark matter relic abundance is set by the semi-annihilation of two dark matter particles into one dark matter particle and one Standard Model particle. These semi-annihilations might still be occurring today in the Galactic Center at a significant rate, generating a flux of boosted dark matter particles. We investigate the possible signals of this flux component in...

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  71. Joseph Bramante (Queen's University)
    7/9/25, 11:00 AM

    A number of theories predict that dark matter is a very massive particle or composite state. Discovering dark matter in this high mass regime requires different approaches. This talk covers recent developments, including composite dark matter that produces unique signatures in underground experiments and dark matter detectable through Bremsstrahlung radiation in Antarctic ice. We also survey...

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  72. Sohan Ghodla (Colgate University)
    7/9/25, 11:00 AM

    The global network of pulsar timing arrays have recently announced the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the nano-Hertz frequency regime. In this talk, I will discuss the implications of early seeding of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) for the observed SGWB. Assuming that these SMBHs were seeded by the collapse of supermassive, dark matter–powered stars (dark...

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  73. Keegan Humphrey
    7/9/25, 11:20 AM

    Atomic Dark Matter (aDM) is a well motivated class of models which has potential to be discovered at ground based Direct Detection experiments. The class of models we consider contains a massless dark photon and two Dirac fermions with different masses and opposite dark charge (dark protons and dark electrons), which will generally interact with the Standard Model through a kinetic mixing...

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  74. Yacine Ali-Haimoud (New York University)
    7/9/25, 11:20 AM

    Dark matter (DM) might have non-gravitational interactions with the standard sector, which would leave signatures in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Traditional searches for such interactions focus on their imprints in CMB power spectra, or 2-point functions. In this talk I will argue that there is valuable information in both the CMB monopole's frequency spectrum, i.e. deviations...

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  75. Alejandro Ibarra (Technical University of Munich)
    7/9/25, 11:20 AM

    The existence of dark matter in our Universe and the existence of an asymmetry between nucleons and antinucleons are two of the most solid evidences for physics beyond the Standard Model. Many mechanisms have been proposed to explain these two phenomena. On the other hand, these mechanisms typically involve different particles and different energy scales, therefore the observed similarity...

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  76. Yilda Boukhtouchen (Queen’s University)
    7/9/25, 11:40 AM

    Composite dark matter models, where dark matter exists in bound states formed in the early universe, have long been a source of scientific interest. In this talk, I will focus on loosely bound dark matter composite states, where the binding energy per constituent is small compared to the constituent’s bare mass. If this binding energy is sufficiently small, scattering with Standard Model...

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  77. Benjamin Lehmann (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
    7/9/25, 11:40 AM

    Compact objects as dark matter have historically been constrained by their dynamical effects. Since these objects can participate in hard few-body scattering processes, they can readily transfer energy to visible objects, with effects such as the disruption of wide binaries. However, binary disruption is not the only possible outcome of such few-body encounters. I will discuss recent work on...

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  78. Hugo Schérer (McGill University)
    7/9/25, 11:40 AM

    Particles properties in an ambient medium are very different from those in vacuum. Their masses and lifetimes change, and new processes even become possible. For example, in the Standard Model, photons in a plasma (plasmons) acquire an effective mass and can decay into neutrinos, a process forbidden in vacuum. These kinds of thermal effects are especially relevant for dark matter...

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  79. Tushar Gupta
    7/9/25, 12:00 PM

    Direct detection of light dark matter can be significantly enhanced by upscattering of dark matter with energetic particles in the cosmic ambient. This boosted dark matter flux can reach kinetic energies up to tens of MeV, while the typical kinetic energies of GeV mass dark matter particles in the Milky Way halo are of the order of keV. Dark matter boosted by energetic diffuse supernova...

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  80. Yitian Sun (McGill)
    7/9/25, 12:00 PM

    Before reionization, the universe acts as a pristine calorimeter for detecting potential energy injections from primordial black holes and decaying or annihilating dark matter. The injected high-energy particles can alter the thermal and ionization states of hydrogen, leaving imprints on the 21-cm line signal. These energy injection sources are inherently inhomogeneous, as they depend on...

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  81. Dr Matthew Stukel (SNOLAB)
    7/9/25, 12:00 PM

    Located 2km underground at SNOLAB, the SuperCDMS (CryogenicDark Matter Search) experiment is currently being constructed and will focus on the detection of low-mass (<10 GeV/c2) dark matter particles. The experiment will utilize 6 silicon, and 18 germanium cryogenic calorimeters arranged in 4 detector towers. There are two types of individual detectors: HV and iZIP. The HV detectors are...

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  82. Stephen Henrich (University of Minnesota)
    7/9/25, 12:20 PM

    We re-examine the case for cold dark matter (DM) produced by ultra-relativistic freeze-out (UFO). UFO is the mechanism by which Standard Model (SM) neutrinos decouple from the radiation bath in the early universe at a temperature $T_{d} \approx 1$ MeV. This corresponds to chemical freeze-out without Boltzmann suppression, such that the freeze-out (decoupling) temperature $T_{d}$ is much...

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  83. Renée Hlozek (University of Toronto)
    7/10/25, 9:00 AM

    The Atacama Cosmology Telescope recently published results from the sixth data release (DR6). I will present these DR6 data and the implications for several cosmological models beyond the standard picture.

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  84. Dr Eleonora Di Valentino (University of Sheffield)
    7/10/25, 9:30 AM

    The ΛCDM model has long served as the standard paradigm in cosmology, offering a remarkably successful description of the Universe’s evolution. Yet, as observational precision continues to improve, persistent tensions have emerged across a range of probes, including the well-known Hubble constant discrepancy. While individual datasets may each align with ΛCDM, their collective interpretation...

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  85. C. Vafa
    7/10/25, 10:00 AM

    The Swampland program, which explores the UV consistency conditions of
    quantum gravity, imposes stringent constraints on viable cosmological models of dark energy. In this talk, I begin by reviewing how these ideas motivate the existence of an additional spatial dimension-the so-called dark dimension-at the micron scale, with its gravitational excitations emerging as natural candidates for...

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  86. Dieter Lust (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik (MPI))
    7/10/25, 11:00 AM
  87. Cliff Burgess (McMaster & Perimeter)
    7/10/25, 11:30 AM

    This talk describes recent progress in the Highland Program: an effort to identify useful non-swampy UV clues guiding a low-energy understanding of the Dark Sector.

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  88. Saeid Foroughi-Abari (Carleton University)
    7/10/25, 1:30 PM

    High luminosity colliders and fixed target facilities using proton beams are sensitive to new weakly coupled degrees of freedom across a broad mass range. Among the various production modes in proton-proton collisions, bremsstrahlung is particularly important for dark sector degrees of freedom with masses between 0.5 and 2.0 GeV, due to mixing with hadronic resonances. In this talk, I will...

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  89. Hao Jiao (McGill University)
    7/10/25, 1:30 PM

    We investigate the possibility that parametric resonant excitation of photons in an ultralight dark matter halo could generate the required flux of Lyman-Werner photons to allow the direct collapse formation of supermassive black hole seeds. This scenario provides a plausible explanation for the origin of quasars observed at high redshifts.

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  90. Philippe ROSNET (LPCA, Université Clermont Auvergne & CNRS/IN2P3)
    7/10/25, 1:30 PM

    The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is scanning the Northern sky since 2018 with a 1.2 m class telescope installed at the Mont Palomar Observatory. This survey detects any transient in the nearby Universe within its magnitude limit, typically up to a redshift of 0.15. In February 2025, the Cosmology working group has released a set of more than 3600 Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) corresponding to...

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  91. Patrick Foldenauer
    7/10/25, 1:50 PM

    We study a consistent minimal Dark Abelian Higgs model as the portal to a GeV-scale DM candidate. This scenario has been previously studied in the literature and has been deemed to be ruled out by indirect detection constraints. However, we find that when taking correctly into account the production and resulting abundance of the GeV DM candidate, there is still a viable window in the...

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  92. Andrew Buchanan (Queen's University)
    7/10/25, 1:50 PM

    As the search for dark matter progresses, it is useful to refine past and future searches for heavy dark matter, including for dark matter masses well above a TeV. I demonstrate the importance of properly modelling the local dark matter velocity distribution, beyond the standard Maxwellian halo model, and in particular how accurate modeling of the Large Magellanic Cloud and Milky Way impact...

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  93. Chloé Barjou-Delayre (LPCA (Laboratoire de Physique Clermont Auvergne))
    7/10/25, 1:50 PM

    The cosmological principle assumes the isotropy of the Universe. The high coverage of the Zwicky Transient Facility survey (ZTF) makes it possible to carry out an unprecedented study of the veracity of this principle by using observation of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia).

    This unique low redshift (z<0.15) survey with more than 3000 SNe Ia in the second data release (ZTF-DR2-SNe Ia) increases...

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  94. Stefan Vogl (University of Freiburg)
    7/10/25, 2:10 PM

    Supernova explosions are extreme cosmic events that may impact not only ordinary matter but also dark matter (DM) halos. In this talk, I explore the possibility that a fraction of supernova energy is released as dark radiation, which could transform a cuspy DM halo into a cored one, potentially explaining observed cores in some dwarf galaxies. Alternatively, limits on DM core sizes provide...

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  95. Maria Clara Cavalcante Siviero (Brazilian Center for Research in Physics)
    7/10/25, 2:10 PM

    For nearly five decades, the interplay between dark matter (DM) halos and baryonic (or luminous) matter has shaped our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. Recent observational data (e.g., the latest DESI results) suggests that the standard $\Lambda$-CDM model, although remarkably successful, may need to be revisited to fully explain the Universe. This tension motivates a more...

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  96. Benjamin Roberts
    7/10/25, 2:10 PM

    We devise and demonstrate a method to search for nongravitational couplings of ultralight dark matter to standard model particles using space-time separated atomic clocks and cavity-stabilized lasers. By making use of space-time separated sensors, which probe different values of an oscillating dark matter field, we can search for couplings that cancel in typical local experiments. This...

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  97. Dr Uddipan Banik (Institute for Advanced Study Princeton)
    7/10/25, 2:30 PM

    Cold dark matter halos are known to harbor universal density profiles such as the NFW, Einasto and prompt cusp profiles in cosmological N-body simulations. Despite decades of research, the origin of these profiles has remained elusive. I will present a first principles kinetic theory calculation based on the Vlasov-Poisson equations that, for the first time, provides a microscopic description...

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  98. Philippe Gris (Université Clermont Auvergne (FR))
    7/10/25, 2:30 PM

    The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will conduct the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a synoptic astronomical survey of large étendue (more than 20000 deg2) starting in october 2025. A systematic scan of the celestial sphere will be perform for ten years, leading to the largest astronomical catalog ever compiled (83 pB) with 17 billions of stars and 20 billions of galaxies.
    With a high...

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  99. Siyang Ling (City University of Hong Kong)
    7/10/25, 2:30 PM

    We provide a framework for numerically computing the effects of free-streaming in scalar fields produced after inflation. First, we provide a detailed prescription for setting up initial conditions in the field. This prescription allows us to specify the power spectra of the fields (peaked on subhorizon length scales and without a homogeneous field mode), and importantly, also correctly...

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  100. Christopher Cappiello
    7/10/25, 2:50 PM

    Supernova cooling has long been used to constrain physics beyond the Standard Model, typically including new mediators or dark matter particles that couple to protons or electrons. The large density of neutrinos inside supernovae also makes supernovae powerful laboratories to study non-standard neutrino interactions. In this work, we consider supernova production of dark matter that couples...

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  101. Prof. Pyungwon Ko (KIAS (Korea Institute for Advanced Study))
    7/10/25, 3:40 PM

    Some cosmic ray observations such as PAMELA/AMS02 positron excesses, and high energy neutrino events reported by IceCUBE and KM3 Collaborations may be interpreted as signals of heavy decaying dark matter (DM). In this talk, I will interpret them using heavy decaying DM with right-handed neutrino (RHN) portals with dark gauge symmetry,dark photon and dark Higgs boson. Including dark gauge...

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  102. Leo Kim
    7/10/25, 3:40 PM

    Dark compact objects can arise naturally in a variety of dark sectors. Clouds of dark matter between a source star and an observer could effectively act as a "lampshade" and dim starlight if the dark sector couples to the Standard Model photon. These dimming effects can be searched for in microlensing surveys, which measure the brightness of stars as a function of time. By considering the...

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  103. Michael Stadlbauer
    7/10/25, 3:40 PM

    As an elegant solution to the strong CP problem and promising dark matter candidate, the QCD axion is one of the best motivated particles beyond the SM. On the phenomenological side, it is extremely predictive as all its couplings to SM particles as well as its mass is determined by a single scale, the axion decay constant. The hunt for the QCD axion, both with terrestrial experiments as well...

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  104. Suruj Jyoti Das (Institute for Basic Science, CTPU)
    7/10/25, 4:00 PM

    We demonstrate that the co-genesis of baryon asymmetry and dark matter can be achieved through the rotation of an axion-like particle, driven by a flip in the vacuum manifold's direction at the end of inflation. This can occur if the axion has a periodic non-minimal coupling to gravity, while preserving the discrete shift symmetry. In non-oscillating inflation models, after inflation there is...

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  105. Dr Sergey Sibiryakov (McMaster U. & Perimeter Inst.)
    7/10/25, 4:00 PM

    The gravitational lensing parallax of gamma-ray bursts (GRB), also known as picolensing, is a promising probe of compact dark matter, such as primordial black holes (PBH). A future space mission consisting of two X-ray/gamma-ray detectors in the Swift/BAT class can probe PBHs in the asteroid-mass window — a range of masses that has been notoriously hard to constrain by any other means. I will...

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  106. Han Wu (Queen's University, McDonald Institute)
    7/10/25, 4:00 PM

    If millicharged particles (MCPs) exist they can be created in the atmosphere when high energy cosmic rays collide with nuclei and could subsequently be detected at neutrino experiments. We extend previous work, which considered MCPs from decays of light mesons and proton bremsstrahlung, by including production from ϒ meson decays and the Drell-Yan process. MCPs with masses below a GeV...

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  107. Nirmalya Brahma (McGill University)
    7/10/25, 4:20 PM

    Some of the most stringent constraints on axions arise from considerations of it's emission from astrophysical plasmas. However, many studies assume that particle production occurs in an isotropic plasma environment. This condition is rarely (if ever) met in astrophysical settings, for instance due to the ubiquitous presence of magnetic fields. The effects of the magnetic fields are only taken...

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  108. Fa Peng Huang
    7/10/25, 4:20 PM

    Motivated by the current status of dark matter search, we discus new production mechanism for heavy dark matter based on non-thermal processes, such as cosmic phase transition, Hawking radiation, and superradiance process. Furthermore, we explore potential signatures of this mechanism in various experiments including the gravitational wave signals. This study provides a viable pathway to...

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  109. Marianne Moore (MIT)
    7/10/25, 4:20 PM

    The annihilation of accumulated dark matter within planetary bodies could lead to observable signatures in the form of anomalous UV airglow and excess internal heat flow. We use existing UV and IR spectral data obtained by spaceprobe flybys of Solar System planets to constrain such effects. By comparing the measured spectra to potential dark matter-induced emissions, we place limits on...

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  110. Jared Barron
    7/10/25, 4:40 PM

    Many extensions of $\Lambda$CDM with additional complexity in the dark sector introduce modifications to the matter power spectrum, often appearing only at small scales. For models with interactions between a component of the dark matter and a dark radiation species at early times, the linear matter power spectrum incurs a suppression and dark acoustic oscillations (DAOs) on small scales. One...

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  111. Walter Tangarife (Loyola University Chicago)
    7/10/25, 4:40 PM

    The capture of dark matter by astrophysical compact objects has been of great interest in recent years. In this talk, we present the capture of heavy dark matter by Population III stars at both the early and late stages of their evolution. In the early phase, we calculate dark matter capture via multiple scatterings of the dark matter with two different target species. For the late stage, we...

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  112. Prof. Jon Sievers (McGill University)
    7/10/25, 4:40 PM

    The Earth's ionosphere provides a natural laboratory for searching for
    resonant conversion of axions.  When the peak plasma frequency in
    the ionosphere rises above the axion conversion frequency, a narrow
    spectral line will appear.  ALBATROS is an array of low-frequency
    radio telescopes observing the sky at low frequencies (~10 MHz and
    below) from Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian High...

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  113. Yawen Xiao
    7/10/25, 5:00 PM

    Detection of millicharged dark matter with trapped ions has emerged as a powerful technique. Millicharged particles scatter off the ions, producing detectable signals either through individual quantum jumps or via an increase in the ions’ overall heating rate. Prior studies have shown that this approach can probe a vast parameter space for superheavy mCPs in the $10^2 \sim 10^9$ GeV mass...

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  114. Prof. Kimberly Boddy (University of Texas at Austin)
    7/11/25, 9:00 AM

    Pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments aim to detect nHz-frequency gravitational waves using high-precision timing of millisecond pulsars. Multiple PTA collaborations have recently reported evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), expected to arise predominantly from a population of inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries. In this talk, I will discuss how PTA...

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  115. Sung Woo YOUN
    7/11/25, 9:30 AM

    The axion is a highly motivated hypothetical particle that could simultaneously address two major fundamental questions in modern physics—the strong CP problem and the dark matter mystery. A large class of experimental searches exploit the axion-photon coupling, aiming to detect axion-induced photons in the presence of strong magnetic fields. These efforts have advanced significantly in recent...

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  116. Annika Peter
    7/11/25, 10:00 AM

    Dark matter models which admit large non-destructive self-interactions (self-interacting dark matter, or SIDM) are having a moment, for both particle physics and astrophysics reasons. Of particular interest is how halos and the galaxies within them — especially satellites — evolve. In this talk, I will discuss several approaches to modeling satellite galaxy evolution in SIDM, and connecting...

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  117. Pankaj Munbodh (University of California Santa Cruz)
    7/11/25, 11:10 AM

    In recent years, attention has shifted to probes of sub-GeV dark matter. In this work, we explore the direct detection prospects of crystal targets through their single (or multi) phonon response to dark matter scattering in the keV-GeV mass range, which couples effectively to protons/neutrons via spin-dependent interactions. In particular, we consider coupling the SM to the dark matter...

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  118. Tomasz Dutka (Korea Institute for Advanced Study)
    7/11/25, 11:10 AM

    The nature of a certain type of supercooled phase transition, where the supercooling is guaranteed to end due to the curvature of the potential at the origin experiencing a sign flip at some temperature. As the potential barrier is quickly vanishing at the temperature scale of the phase transition, is not immediately clear if critical bubbles are able to form. This clearly can have large...

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  119. Prof. Brooks Thomas (Lafayette College)
    7/11/25, 11:30 AM

    Cosmological stasis is a phenomenon wherein the abundances of multiple cosmological energy components with different equations of state remain constant for an extended period despite the expansion of the universe. This stasis phenomenon can give rise to cosmological epochs in which the effective equation-of-state parameter $\langle w\rangle$ for the universe is constant, but differs from the...

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  120. Osamu Seto (Hokkaido University)
    7/11/25, 11:30 AM

    We study a mechanism to make dark matter stable based on the Pauli blocking in the fermion background. We examine this scenario in both Boltzmann equation and quantum field formulation and evaluate the evolution equations. We apply this mechanism to a realistic model of neutrino and dark matter.

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  121. Cassandra Moats (Fisk University)
    7/11/25, 11:30 AM

    Primordial black holes (PBHs) have been invoked as a component of dark matter, and PBH mergers will produce copious gravitational radiation. The future launch of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), an ESA/NASA gravitational wave observatory set to launch in 2035, will open a new low-frequency band of the gravitational wave sky, one that may include PBH mergers. Our work focuses on...

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  122. Dr Saniya Heeba (McGill University)
    7/11/25, 11:50 AM

    Millicharged particles (MCPs) i.e., particles with a small effective charge are a key component of various dark sectors. If these particles exist, they will be produced both in the early universe and in various astrophysical plasmas. The former results in an irreducible density of these particles, the so-called millicharged background, which can be detected using direct detection...

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  123. Andrija Rasovic
    7/11/25, 11:50 AM

    Stochastic gravitational wave (GW) backgrounds from first-order phase transitions are a compelling target for next-generation GW observatories, offering a novel probe of dark sectors with strong phase transitions. However, reliable theoretical predictions for the GW signal strength remain challenging, particularly beyond the high-temperature regime where standard techniques like dimensional...

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  124. Robert Brandenberger (McGill University)
    7/11/25, 11:50 AM

    We propose a mechanism for the generation of magnetic fields on cosmological scales that is operative after recombination. An essential
    ingredient is an instability of the electromagnetic field driven by an oscillating pseudo-scalar dark matter field, $\phi$, that is coupled to the electromagnetic field tensor via a $\phi F \wedge F$ term in the Lagrangian of axion-electrodynamics. We find...

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  125. Gonzalo Alonso Alvarez (University of Toronto)
    7/11/25, 12:10 PM

    The dark sector may feature dissipative interactions that can lead to the formation of dark matter substructure including dark stellar objects. A general prediction of these scenarios is that dark matter may be shinning in the particles that mediate the self interactions. I will describe the conditions under which conventional dark matter experiments are sensitive to this dark starlight, and...

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  126. Reiko Harada (the University of Tokyo)
    7/11/25, 12:10 PM

    Gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences offer a promising avenue for inferring the Hubble parameter independently of electromagnetic distance ladders or cosmic microwave background observations. As an independent probe of cosmic expansion, it has the potential to contribute to ongoing efforts to resolve the Hubble tension and to shed light on the properties of the dark sector. In...

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  127. Christian Capanelli (McGill University)
    7/11/25, 12:10 PM

    In the Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) scenario, the dark matter is composed of an ultra-light scalar field with coherence length and wave interference on astrophysical scales. Scalar fields generically have quartic self-interactions that modify their dispersion relation and the associated evolution of density perturbations. In this talk, I will present the first dedicated analysis of the relationship...

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  128. Dr Sergey Sibiryakov (McMaster U. & Perimeter Inst.)
    7/11/25, 12:30 PM

    False vacuum decay (aka first-order phase transition) in field theory at high temperature proceeds via formation of bubbles of new phase inside the old phase. This process has been extensively discussed in cosmology in relation to baryogenesis and as possible source of gravitational waves. It is traditionally described using the methods of statistical physics which rely on thermal equilibrium...

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  129. Tianyi Xie (McGill University)
    7/11/25, 12:30 PM

    We propose a fifth force model in which dark matter (DM) couples to a scalar field, leading to deviations from standard cosmology.
    The scalar field acquires an effective mass through its quadratic coupling to DM, which screens the fifth force on large scales and in the early universe. At late times, the scalar field evolves into two components: an attractor tightly coupled to DM and an...

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  130. Deepak Kar (University of the Witwatersrand (ZA))

    Strongly interacting dark sectors, colloquially referred to as dark-QCD, is becoming increasingly popular in the collider community, primarily because of the rich phenomenology and the novel signatures it offers. The author pioneered the first search for semi-visible jets in ATLAS, and is following that up with multiple studies focussing on other final states (arXiv:2207.01885), new generator...

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  131. Meng-Xiang Lin (University of Pennsylvania)

    The fundamental natures of dark energy and dark matter remain two of the biggest mysteries in modern cosmology. We show that a simple coupling between dark energy and dark matter can simultaneously address two distinct hints at new physics coming from cosmological observations. The first is the recent evidence from the DESI project and supernovae observations that the dark energy equation of...

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  132. Jaime Forero-Romero (Universidad de los Andes)

    I present ASTRA (Algorithm for Stochastic Topological RAnking), a new method for classifying cosmic web structures, designed to explore the dark universe. While traditional approaches struggle to map both dense regions and cosmic voids—critical tracers of dark matter and cosmic acceleration—ASTRA leverages probabilistic reconstruction of underdense regions using random catalogs. This allows us...

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  133. Yuxuan He

    Alkali-noble-gas spin systems have been widely used in searches for ultra-light dark matter coupling to nucleon spins. These searches usually confronted limitations of bandwidth and sensitivity. In this talk, we demonstrated two strategies to broaden the sensitive bandwidths in dark matter searches with alkali-noble-gas spin systems. The system has been implemented in the hybrid spin-coupled...

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  134. Shouvik Roychoudhury (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics)

    Based on arXiv: 2409.13022 (published in ApJ Letters). We update constraints on cosmological parameters in a 12-parameter model, which extends the standard 6-parameter ΛCDM to include dynamical dark energy and massive neutrinos, along with other new parameters. We use the latest Planck PR4 (2020) likelihoods, DESI DR1 BAO, and the latest uncalibrated type Ia Supernovae (SNe) datasets. In this...

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  135. Aidan Reilly (SLAC/Stanford)

    Dark kinetic heating of neutron stars has been extensively studied as a promising dark matter detection avenue. This occurs when dark matter is accelerated to relativistic speeds in the gravitational well of high-escape velocity objects, and deposits its kinetic energy after becoming captured by the object, thereby increasing its temperature. I will show how this effect can also arise in...

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  136. Ranjeet Kumar (IISER Bhopal)

    We present a novel framework for dark matter induced proton decay. This scenario arises naturally from a $U(1)_{B+L}$ symmetry, whose spontaneous breaking triggers the proton decay. This breaking leads to a residual $Z_4$ subgroup, which ensures dark matter stability and forbids proton decay at tree level. Consequently, proton decay occurs at the one-loop level, mediated by dark sector...

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  137. Nirmal Raj (Indian Institute of Science)

    I show that the decay, self-annihilation or nucleonic scatters of dark matter can trigger phase transitions from a hadronic to a quark/hybrid phase in neutron stars. For certain high-density equations of state of nuclear matter and stellar mass-radius configurations, the phase transition would convert the neutron star to a black hole. Consequently, the observed existence of neutron stars and...

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  138. Ashlee Caddell (The University of Queensland)

    The mystery of dark matter (DM) is a long-standing issue in physics, with numerous dedicated experiments returning no confirmed detections. As many direct detection experiments rely on catching a signal of nuclear recoil, these types of experiments are not applicable to many DM models.

    Instead, we can utilise the precision that atomic physics allows to search for potential interactions...

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  139. Patrick Adolf

    Motivated by the work of Cohen, Kaplan and Nelson (CKN) in which the authors argue that gravity resticts the range of validity of a QFT, we consider a time-dependent dark energy density, scaling proportional to the squared Hubble parameter $H(z)$.
    These models are of particular interest in the light of the recent data release of the DESI collaboration, since the measurements show an...

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  140. Elena Pinetti (Flatiron Institute/Simons Foundation)

    Axions with a mass around 1 eV can decay into near-infrared photons. Using blank-sky observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, I search for a narrow emission line due to decaying dark matter and derive leading constraints on the axion-photon coupling in the eV-scale mass range.

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  141. Maxim Pospelov

    Nuclear reactors are an intense source of radiation emitted in the form of
    different particles of MeV-scale energy. 
    We revisit several constraints that past and current experiments set on the light weakly coupled
    particles. We find new, more stringent
    constraints on millicharged particles and dark photons. We also consider pair-production and/or
    upscattering of light dark matter, and...

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  142. Tirtha Sankar Ray (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India)

    Sub-GeV neutrinos produced in a stellar core may emerge from main sequence stars, white dwarfs and brown dwarfs producing possible observable signals of dark matter capture. A distribution of these stars near the Milky Way galactic center will produce a neutrino flux that can be probed at Earth based neutrino observatories like Super-Kamiokande and Hyper-Kamiokande. In this talk we demonstrate...

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  143. Debarun Paul (Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)

    Primordial gravitational waves (GWs) provide a unique way to look into the early Universe, revealing the connection among inflationary reheating, dark matter (DM) and baryogenesis. I will explore how distinct GW signatures can test new physics scenarios beyond the standard model, offering insights into the fundamental nature of the DM and leptogenesis. I will first discuss how inflationary GWs...

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  144. Zihui Wang

    We investigate the astrophysical consequences of an attractive long-range interaction between dark matter and baryonic matter. Our study highlights the role of this interaction in inducing dynamical friction between dark matter and stars, which can significantly influence the evolution of compact stellar systems. Using the star cluster in Eridanus II as a case study, we derive a new stringent...

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  145. Annika Peter
  146. Maxim Pospelov
  147. Alexandra Amon (Princeton)
  148. Prof. Robert Brandenberger (McGill University)

    The recent DESI results provide increasing evidence that the density of dark energy is time- dependent. I will recall why, from the point of view of fundamental theory, this result should not be surprising.

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