UCLA Dark Matter 2018

Session

Session 10

22 Feb 2018, 17:30

UCLA Faculty Center

Conveners

Session 10: Dark matter theory

• Katherine Freese (University of Michigan)

181. Lina Necib (Caltech): Empirical Determination of the Dark Matter Velocity Distribution

Lina Necib (MIT)

22/02/2018, 17:32

Talk

Using the hydrodynamic simulation Eris, we found that the kinematics of dark matter follows closely the kinematics of old metal poor stars, present in the Milky Way's stellar halo. We use this correspondence to obtain the first empirical measurement of the local velocity distribution of dark matter, by analyzing the Gaia data and computing the velocity distribution of metal poor stars. We find...

164. Riccardo Catena (Chalmers U. of Technology, Sweden): Determining dark matter particle properties with direct detection experiments

Riccardo Catena (SISSA)

22/02/2018, 17:46

Talk

Direct detection experiments search for nuclear recoil events induced by the non-relativistic scattering of Milky Way dark matter (DM) particles in low-background detectors. Current strategies for the experimental analysis and theoretical interpretation of direct detection experiments focus on two parameters: the DM particle mass, and the cross-section for DM-nucleon scattering computed under...

184. Patrick Stengel (Stockholm): Dark Matter and QCD-Charged Mediators in the Quasi-Degenerate Regim

Patrick Stengel

22/02/2018, 18:00

Talk

We study a scenario in which the only light new particles are a Majorana fermion dark matter candidate and one or more QCD-charged scalars, which couple to light quarks.This scenario has several interesting phenomenological features if the new particles are nearly degenerate in mass. In particular, LHC searches for the light scalars have reduced sensitivity, since the visible and invisible...

183. Paul Shapiro (U of Texas at Austin): Cosmology in a Universe with Complex Scalar-Field Dark Matter

Paul Shapiro (The University of Texas at Austin)

22/02/2018, 18:14

Talk

We consider an alternative to WIMP cold dark matter (CDM), ultralight bosonic dark matter (m ≥ 10^(-22) eV) described by a complex scalar field (SFDM) with global U(1) symmetry, for which the comoving particle number density is conserved after particle production during standard reheating. We allow for a repulsive self-interaction. For complex SFDM, structure formation is CDM-like on large...

182. Tanja Rindler-Daller (U of Vienna): Growth of perturbations in a Universe with complex scalar-field dark matter

Dr Tanja Rindler-Daller (Dept. of Physics, University of Michigan)

22/02/2018, 18:28

Talk

There is great interest in scalar-field dark matter (SFDM) comprised of ultralight bosons, in which structure formation is supposed to be like standard CDM on large scales but suppressed on small scales by quantum effects. We study the case of complex SFDM, with a global U(1)-symmetry, for which the comoving boson number density is conserved after reheating when SFDM emerged. In addition, we...

163. Sebastian Baum (Stockholm U. and Oskar Klein Centre, Sweden): Thermal dark matter and the Higgs

Sebastian Baum (Stockholm University and Oskar Klein Centre)

22/02/2018, 18:42

Talk

We analyze a low energy effective model of Dark Matter in which the thermal relic density is provided by a singlet Majorana fermion which interacts with the Higgs fields via higher dimensional operators. Direct detection signatures may be reduced if so-called blind spot solutions exist, which naturally appear in models with extended Higgs sectors. Explicit mass terms for the Majorana fermion...