Conveners
Astro-particle Physics: Neutrinos and Dark Sectors
- Javier Fernandez Acevedo
- Javier Fernández Acevedo (SLAC)
Astro-particle Physics: Dark Matter and ALPs
- Natalia Tapia Arellano (University of Utah)
In October 2022, gamma-ray telescopes observed an extremely bright gamma-ray burst, GRB221009A. This event was quickly heralded as the brightest GRB of all time (BOAT) by several metrics. Followup searches for neutrino emission were also performed with the IceCube detector. In this talk, I will present the results of an analysis searching for low-energy antineutrino emission from GRB221009A in...
Sterile neutrinos constitute one of the simplest solutions to explain the origin of neutrino masses. They can be easily produced in the hot and dense core of a core-collapse supernova (SN). Firstly, I'll revisit the SN1987A cooling bounds for dipole portal using the integrated luminosity method, which yields more reliable results than emissivity loss criterion. I'll then discuss a novel bound...
We constrain the interaction cross-section between neutrinos and dark matter using the inferred dark matter density profiles of Milky Way dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Assuming $\Lambda$CDM (DM is cold, collisionless, no self-interactions), energy injection into the dark matter sub-halo is needed to transform an initially cusped profile into a cored profile. Using estimates of the core sizes from...
The exploration of dark sector mediators by gravitational waves from binary inspirals has been a subject of recent interest. Dark mediators typically generate a Yukawa-like potential that either directly impacts the orbital decay through dipole radiation or indirectly through altering the effective gravitational constant. However, with the rescaling of the binary component’s mass, the...
Exploring the nexus between macroscopic planetary science and Beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics offers avenues to search for novel particle signatures. One such connection involves investigating deviations in celestial object motion from well-established theories of gravity. These deviations are attributed to the influence of long-range forces mediated by new ultralight particles, referred...
Hawking radiation emitted by a black hole is typically modified in the presence of new degrees of freedom beyond the Standard Model. In this talk I will discuss the characteristics of a hypothetical observation of a black hole in its final minutes of evaporation by current and upcoming Very/Ultra High Energy Gamma Ray telescopes, such as HAWC, LHAASO, and CTA. I will then discuss the potential...
The 21-cm signal provides a novel avenue to measure the thermal state of the universe during cosmic dawn and reionization, and thus a probe of exotic energy injection such as those from decaying or annihilating dark matter (DM). These DM processes are inherently inhomogeneous: both decay and annihilation are density dependent, and furthermore the fraction of injected energy that is deposited...
The polarization of light from various astrophysical sources could serve as a probe of new physics, including axion-like particles (ALPs). Previously most observational and theoretical studies of such polarization signals have focused on photon energies below the MeV scale, although there are studies of the effect of ALPs on photon intensity at the GeV scale. Extending the studies of...
Superradiance provides a unique opportunity for investigating dark sectors as well as primordial black holes (PBHs), which themselves are candidates for dark matter (DM) over a wide mass range. Using axion-like particles (ALPs) as an example, we show that line signals emerging from a superradiated ALP cloud combined with Hawking radiation from PBHs, along with microlensing observations lead to...
The Jovian magnetic field, being the strongest and largest planetary one in the solar system, could offer us new insights into possible microscopic scale new physics, such as a non-zero mass of the Standard Model (SM) photon or a light dark photon kinetically mixing with the SM photon. We employ the immense data set from the latest Juno mission, which provides us unprecedented information...
A significant excess of gamma-rays has been detected by the Fermi-LAT space telescope in the direction of the Galactic center, yet its origin remains uncertain. The Galactic center excess (GCE) can be explained as a signal of annihilating dark matter or emissions from point sources such as unresolved millisecond pulsars. In principle, these hypotheses can be distinguished with likelihood based...
Axions are favored as a possible dark matter candidate. They can be produced in large quantities in stellar environments and have non-trivial effects on stellar evolution. Cepheid variables are particularly sensitive to axion production: the Cepheid blue loop stages can be eliminated if the axion coupling to Standard Model particles is strong enough and axions are produced copiously. This has...
