From super strong to super weak: New ideas for dark sectors

by Prof. Felix Kahlhoefer

Tuesday 15 Oct 2019, 16:15 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

Main/2-313 - 313 (Main)

Considering the complexity of the Standard Model of particle physics, it seems implausible that a single new particle should be able to explain the observed abundance of dark matter in the Universe. In this talk I will explore the idea of a dark sector, which contains not only a dark matter candidate but several new particles and interactions. I will present the novel predictions of such models in terms of their cosmology and particle physics signatures. The focus will be on two specific examples: An extremely weakly interacting dark sector, which never enters into thermal equilibrium in the early Universe, and a strongly interacting dark sector, in which the dominant processes are interactions between different dark bound states. I will show that both cases predict new long-lived particles decaying into Standard Model particles, which can be searched for at the LHC and the intensity frontier.