Thermal Relic Dark Matter (and Beyond)

20.04.2018 14:15 – 15:15

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the matter in our Universe, but its particle origin remains a mystery. A promising possibility is that dark matter is a thermal relic: a particle that was produced thermally in the early Universe. A leading candidate for thermal relic dark matter is the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). I’ll review the cosmological argument for the WIMP, and how a diverse set of experiments are rapidly closing its available parameter space. I’ll then highlight several other types of thermal relics, and show how they point to masses, couplings, and experimental prospects that differ dramatically from the WIMP. If time permits, I’ll finish by introducing the recent (tentative) first observation of the cosmological 21cm absorption line by the EDGES experiment. I’ll explain how the stronger-than-expected absorption signal can be explained if nonthermal dark matter produced soft photons during the cosmic dark ages.

Lieu

Bâtiment: Ecole de Physique

Auditoire Stuckelberg

entrée libre