Conveners
Dark Matter: Models
- Mudit Rai (Texas AM University)
Dark Matter: Astrophysics
- Gil Paz
Dark Matter: Experimental Searches
- Flip Tanedo (UC Riverside)
Dark Matter: Models
- Arnab Dasgupta (University of Pittsburgh)
Dark Matter: Light Dark Matter
- Kirtimaan Mohan (Michigan State University)
Numerous models of particle dark matter have been proposed, many of which remain viable given current experimental and observational constraints. Minimal dark matter is an extremely attractive option since it envisions the addition of a single SU(2) multiplet to the standard model, rather than a complicated array of particles and interactions. However, experimental limits already rule out a...
Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) provides an intriguing alternative to collisionless dark matter, especially when it comes to resolving small-scale structure problems. I will present our preliminary findings on gravothermal collapse in SIDM halos using an extended version of the GravothermalSIDM code, now capable of incorporating velocity-dependent cross sections from the CLASSICS...
Blazars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGN), the brightest continuously emitting sources in the Universe, powered by accreting supermassive black holes (SMBH). Their defining characteristic is the presence of powerful, back-to-back relativistic jets of protons and electrons, with one jet closely aligned in the direction of Earth. This offers a unique opportunity to probe physics...
The lack of direct detections for weakly interacting massive particles has led theorists to think about more exotic scenarios for producing DM in the early Universe. One viable alternative is gravitational particle production i.e. the creation of particles through due to the presence of a sufficiently strong gravitational field. In this talk, I will go over how this mechanism can be used to...
Macroscopic, composite, and ultraheavy dark matter remains one of the most intriguing dark matter candidates. Along with primordial black holes, this includes quark nuggets, Fermi balls, Q-balls, and more. I will motivate these candidates and discuss their formation mechanisms, before discussing here my recent work which places constraints on a wide and previously unconstrained area of the...
Sterile neutrinos are compelling dark matter candidates, yet the minimal Dodelson-Widrow (DW) production mechanism is excluded by astrophysical observations. We propose a scenario where heavy scalar-mediated non-standard interactions (NSI) between active and sterile neutrinos not only alter the DW mechanism but also generate new production channels, such as $\nu_a \nu_a \to \nu_s \nu_s$. This...
In this work, we investigate the dependence of dark matter (DM) direct detection results, specifically single phonon scattering observables, on the astrophysical properties of the local DM halo. We analyze the impact of uncertainties in DM halo velocity distributions on both total cross-sections and daily modulation in single phonon excitation rates. Employing the Standard Halo Model (SHM),...
We consider weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter in a parity solution to the strong CP problem. The WIMP phenomenology is drastically affected by the presence of parity partners of WIMP and electroweak gauge bosons. We focus on a parity extension of $SU(2)_L$-doublet fermion dark matter, identify the viable parameter space, and derive the predictions of the theory. We find...
We are considering a minimal $U(1)_B$ extension of the Standard Model (SM)
by promoting the baryon number as a local gauge symmetry to accommodate a
stable dark matter (DM) candidate. The gauge theory of baryons induces non-
trivial triangle gauge anomalies, and we provide a simple anomaly-free solution
by adding three exotic fermions. A scalar S spontaneously breaks the $U(1)_B$...
Dark matter (DM) - neutrino interactions will necessarily lead to a time-delayed flux of neutrinos from transient sources. Considering Milky Way supernovae, we find scattering with DM can lead to neutrino time delays on the order of thousands of years. Multiple supernovae are expected to occur on such timescales, meaning we expect a nearly continuous diffuse neutrino flux. We call this the...
We consider a simplified model of dark matter which contains a scalar dark matter candidate $\chi$ and a coloured scalar mediator $\phi$. The model parameter space contains dark matter mass $m_\chi$, mediator mass $m_\phi$, the dark matter coupling with the mediator $\lambda_d$ and the color representation $r$ of the mediator $\phi$. In this model, we investigate the phenomenology of...
We present a framework to model microlensing signatures of novel compact object populations beyond the traditional stellar evolution path. A compelling model to investigate is the dissipative dark matter scenario, in particular, the atomic dark matter model, which can form dark black holes (DBHs) from the gravitational collapse of fragmented dark hydrogen gas. DBHs have unique mass ranges and...
Magnetic levitation technology offers force and displacement sensitivities at the quantum frontier, making it an attractive platform for probing the feeble interactions expected of beyond the Standard Model physics. Despite its promise, the case for magnetic levitation in fundamental physics applications is only just being built. In this talk, I will demonstrate how a setup based on the...
The recent demonstration of laser excitation of the 8 eV isomeric state of thorium-229 is a significant step towards a nuclear clock. The low excitation energy likely results from a cancellation between the contributions of the electromagnetic and strong forces. Physics beyond the Standard Model could disrupt this cancellation, highlighting nuclear clocks' sensitivity to new physics.
It is...
Supersymmetry (SUSY) provides elegant solutions to several problems in the Standard Model, and searches for SUSY particles are an important component of the LHC physics program. The direct production of electroweak SUSY particles, including sleptons, charginos, and neutralinos, is a particularly interesting area with connections to dark matter and the naturalness of the Higgs mass. Naturalness...
Determination of the nature of dark matter is one of the most fundamental problems of particle physics and cosmology. This talk presents recent searches for dark matter particles from the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
For many spin-dependent dark matter-electron couplings, the DM's scattering rate in a target material can be written in terms of its dynamical magnetic susceptibility. This quantity can be inferred from neutron scattering data, without requiring a microscopic model of the material. As a proof of principle, I will show that an existing dataset can be used to find the DM scattering rate in...
We perform the first high-throughput search for materials that can serve as excellent low-mass dark matter detectors. Using properties of over one thousand materials from the Materials Project database, we project the sensitivity in dark matter parameter space for experiments constructed from each material, including both absorption and scattering processes between dark matter and electrons....
The age of WIMP-like dark matter direct detection is drawing to a close due to their non-detection at exquisitely sensitive liquid-noble detectors. However, models where the dark matter is lighter than the mass of a proton remain largely inaccessible to existing probes. Recently, molecular targets have emerged as particularly well-suited detector materials to look for this sub-GeV dark matter....
Dark matter continuously accumulates at the Earthโs core through DMโnucleon scattering as Earth traverses the Milky Wayโs dark matter halo. With higher dark matter density in the Earthโs core, potential annihilations of these dark matter particles into Standard Model particles, like tau neutrinos and tau leptons, offer an intriguing observational target for indirect dark matter searches....
Experiments with directional sensitivity are ideal for discovering a dark matter signal even in the presence of irreducible backgrounds. Crystalline trans-stilbene ($C_{14} H_{14}$) is an excellent first example, with O(10%) amplitudes in its daily modulation signals. In this talk, I present a simple, universal measure for quantifying the statistical power of a directionally sensitive counting...
A favored scenario for axions to be dark matter is for them to form a cosmic string network
that subsequently decays, allowing for a tight link between the axion mass and relic abundance.
We discuss an example in which the axion is protected from quantum gravity effects that would
spoil its ability to solve the strong CP problem: namely a string theoretic axion arising from gauge
symmetry...
Axion-like particles are currently among the most popular dark matter candidates. Considerable theoretical efforts have gone into expanding the parameter window of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion beyond the narrow QCD band. The $Z_\mathcal{N}$ QCD axion model is the only such model which reduces the QCD axion mass naturally. The $Z_\mathcal{N}$ model invokes a discrete $Z_\mathcal{N}$...
If dark matter is ultralight, the number density of dark matter is very high and the techniques of zero-temperature field theory are no longer valid. The dark matter number density modifies the vacuum giving it a non-negligible particle occupation number. For fermionic dark matter, this occupation number can be no larger than one. However, in the case of bosons the occupation number is...
We consider new contributions of lepton and nucleon EDM, which are
given by background effects of ultralight bosons. We calculate EDM contributions up to two loop diagram for CP-violating ALPs interactions with photon, lepton and nucleon. These new contributions will give new constraints on couplings, and constraints would be stronger if ALP mass is smaller than $10^{โ11}$ eV.
While dark matter does not interact strongly with the standard model, for some models, this darkness can be attributed to a low population of a critical participant of a standard model active interaction. This ultimately leads to the formation of a bottleneck which prevents a discernible signal from being produced. On the other hand, small black holes produce all particles, whether in the...
I will discuss the Sommerfeld enhancement of scattering cross sections due to quantum forces. Quantum forces are forces which arise only at loop level. Since they are subject to corrections from a background with finite temperature or number density, there will also be an important contribution to the Sommerfeld enhancement in the presence of a background. In particular this can be applied to...
We revisit the phenomenology of dark matter (DM) scenarios within radius-stabilized Randall-Sundrum models. Specifically, we consider models where the dark matter candidates are Standard Model (SM) singlets confined to the TeV-brane and interact with the SM via spin-2 and spin-0 gravitational Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes. We compute the thermal relic density of DM particles in these models by...
We investigate dark matter and gravitational wave production in a type II 2HDM with the addition of an inert complex singlet. A symmetry is imposed under which the doublets are even and the singlet is odd to ensure the stability of the dark matter candidate. When the singlet obtains a VEV, only the pseudoscalar component of the singlet contributes to the dark matter sector. When the singlet...
Primordial black holes remain compelling candidates for dark matter and could produce detectable high-energy neutrino fluxes through Hawking radiation. We extend beyond previous analytical frameworks by implementing a comprehensive examination of various black hole mass distribution models and their corresponding neutrino emission characteristics. Through detailed simulations of detector...
Ultra-light bosonic dark matter (ULDM) is an interesting dark matter candidate. While the wave-like nature of ULDM has been widely studied in the literature, we explore another distinctive feature
of ULDM as Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in this paper: the emergence of vortices in rotating BEC-ULDM halos. Using numerical solution of the GPP equation, we demonstrate that a vortex lattice...
I will present some preliminary results from our study on Axion-Like Particles (ALPs) production from electromagnetic showers in beam dump experiments, focusing on SHiP as a relevant benchmark example. Existing projections for SHiPโs sensitivity to ALPs have focused on production from either the primary photon beam or the (high-energy) photons produced by ฯ0 โ ฮณฮณ. In this work, we study the...
Optically levitated quantum sensors have recently been increasingly popular in proposals to detect ultralight dark matter and gravitational waves due to their world-leading sensitivities to forces. Although historically less optimized to search for many DM couplings than e.g. magnetic traps, optical traps can reach much higher frequencies (kHz-to-GHz). After outlining the necessary concepts in...
We explore how recent advancements in the manipulation of single ionic wave packets open new avenues for detecting weak magnetic fields sourced by ultralight dark matter. By leveraging the entanglement between the ion's spin and motional degrees of freedom, proposed trapped-ion matter-wave interferometers enable the measurement of the dynamical Zeeman phase shift accrued by the ion over its...
We propose a novel method to obtain sensitivity to dark mediators and dark sectors at the LHC with masses of $\sim 10 \text{ MeV} - 10 \text{ GeV}$, providing complementarity with beam dump experiments. For this talk, we consider dark photons, which can be produced at the LHC by neutral meson decays, bremsstrahlung off baryons, or directly produced in correlation with a jet. We then consider...
In this work, we focus on the 2-to-3 scattering process between dark matter (DM) and nuclei, mediated by the Standard Model (SM) photon and a scalar particle with its mass spanning from 10 keV to 100 GeV. This process provides an efficient channel for producing energetic photons in the final state. These photons serve as a powerful probe in multiple contexts: they investigate unexplored...
We propose new solutions to accommodate both the MiniBooNE electron-like and MicroBooNE photon low-energy excesses, based on interactions involving light dark matter and/or neutrinos. The novelty lies in the utilization of a photon arising from 2-to-3 scattering processes between a nucleus/nucleon and a neutrino and/or dark matter ($\nu/\chi + N\to \nu/\chi + N + \gamma$) via exchanges of...
I will demonstrate a general photon proliferation effect from N-body ultralight dark matter (DM) annihilation in the early Universe, which can induce a drastic photon-temperature shift after neutrino decoupling. For pseudoscalar DM mass below the eV scale, I will show that the photon proliferation effect becomes significant as the mass approaches the ultralight end, presenting the leading...
