Dark Matter Beyond the “WIMP" Era

by Dr Fatemeh Elahi (School of Particles and Accelerators, IPM)

Wednesday 23 Aug 2017, 15:30 → 16:30 Asia/Tehran

Particles and Accelerators School Seminar Room (Larak)

Dark Matter is one of the key ingredients of the Standard Model of Cosmology. The existence of dark matter has been established from numerous astrophysical and cosmological observations, but the nature of its interaction still remains enigmatic. Assuming dark matter is a single particle thermal relic, a canonical prediction of its interaction cross-section with the SM particles has been developed. In particular, a dark matter that is weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) can naturally produce the observed relic abundance. However, after more than a generation of experiments, no unambiguous signature of dark matter is detected, and most of the targeted parameter space is excluded. Thus, we are led to move away from the simple paradigm and explore alternative scenarios. I will discuss two classes of such scenarios (namely the secluded WIMP and asymmetric dark matter), with an explicit model in each class. I will explain how these models can avoid the current bounds, and yet have 'natural' size couplings. The signature of these models in the experiments will also be discussed.