The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. The nature of the dark matter constituents cannot be determined till they are directly detected. Recent developments in particle physics provide a number of candidates as constituents of dark matter, called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Since these interact weakly and are of low energy they cannot excite the target and can only be detected via measuring the recoiling nucleus. For all WIMPs, including the most popular candidate, the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), the relevant cross sections arise out of the following mechanisms: i) The coherent mode, due to the scalar interaction. ii) The charge coherent mode, with only proton contribution, as in the recent case of secluded dark matter scenario and iii) The spin contribution arising from the axial current. In this paper we will focus on the spin contribution, which maybe important, especially for light targets.
The 40 years old Standard Model, the theory of particle physics, seems to describe all experimental data very well. All of its elementary particles were identified and studied apart from the Higgs boson until 2012. For decades many experiments were built and operated searching for it, and finally, the two main experiments of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, CMS and ATLAS, in 2012 observed a new particle with properties close to those predicted for the Higgs boson. In this paper we outline the search story: the exclusion of the Higgs boson at LEP, the Large Electron Positron collider, and its…
Most cosmological constraints on modified gravity are obtained assuming that the cosmic evolution was standard $Λ$CDM in the past and that the present matter density and power spectrum normalization are the same as in a $Λ$CDM model. Here we examine how the constraints change when these assumptions are lifted. We focus in particular on the parameter $Y$ (also called $G_{\mathrm{eff}}$) that quantifies the deviation from the Poisson equation. This parameter can be estimated by comparing with the model-independent growth rate quantity $fσ_{8}(z)$ obtained through redshift distortions. We reduce …
The dark (or hidden) photon is a massive U(1) gauge boson theorized as a dark force mediator and as a dark matter candidate. Dark photons can be detected with axion cavity haloscopes by probing for a power excess caused by the dark photon's kinetic mixing with Standard Model photons. Haloscope axion exclusion limits may therefore be converted into competitive dark photon parameter limits via the calculation of a corresponding dark photon to photon coupling factor. This calculation allows for an improvement in sensitivity of around four orders of magnitude relative to other dark photon exclusio…
The 40 years old Standard Model, the theory of particle physics, seems to describe all experimental data very well. All of its elementary particles were identified and studied apart from the Higgs boson until 2012. For decades many experiments were built and operated searching for it, and finally, the two main experiments of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, CMS and ATLAS, in 2012 observed a new particle with properties close to those predicted for the Higgs boson. In this talk we describe the search process: the exclusion of the Higgs boson at LEP, the Large Electron Positron collider, and t…
Two germanium detectors are currently operating in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory at 2450 m.w.e looking for WIMP dark matter. One is a 2 kg 76Ge IGEX detector (RG-2) which has an energy threshold of 4 keV and a low-energy background rate of about 0.3 c/keV/kg/day. The other is a small (234 g) natural abundance Ge detector (COSME), of low energy threshold (2.5 keV) and an energy resolution of 0.4 keV at 10 keV which is looking for WIMPs and for solar axions. The analysis of 73 kg-days of data taken by COSME in a search for solar axions via their photon Primakoff conversion and Bragg scatte…
Absorption and dispersion of probe photons in the field of a high-intensity circularly polarized laser wave are investigated. The optical theorem is applied for determining the absorption coefficients in terms of the imaginary part of the vacuum polarization tensor. Compact expressions for the vacuum refraction indices and the photon absorption coefficients are obtained in various asymptotic regimes of interest. The outcomes of this analysis reveal that, far from the region relatively close to the threshold of the two-photon reaction, the birefringence and dichroism of the vacuum are small and…
The production of axionlike particles (ALPs) with small masses in ultraperipheral $Pb - p$ and $Pb - Pb$ collisions at the LHC is investigated. The cross section and kinematical distributions associated to the diphoton final state produced in the $γγ\rightarrow a \rightarrow γγ$ subprocesses are estimated considering a realistic set of kinematical cuts. A detailed analysis of the backgrounds is performed and the expected sensitivity to the ALP production is derived. Our results demonstrate that a future experimental analysis of the exclusive diphoton production for the forward rapidities probe…
We present a summary of the current status of searches for dark matter at the LHC from the ATLAS and CMS experiments. For various assumptions in the simplified parameter space, the LHC exclusions is complementary to direct detection results. Mono-object analyses in search of dark matter and various analyses searching for dark matter mediators are presented.
We conduct the first ``light-shining-through-wall" (LSW) search for dark photons using two state-of-the-art high quality-factor superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities and report the results of its pathfinder run. Our new experimental setup enables improvements in sensitivity over previous searches and covers new dark photon parameter space. We design delicate calibration and measurement protocols to utilize the high-$Q$ setup at Dark SRF. Using cavities operating at $1.3 \ \text{GHz}$, we establish a new exclusion limit for kinetic mixing as small as {$ε= 1.6\times 10^{-9}$} and provid…
A signal from decaying dark matter (DM) can be unambiguously distinguished from spectral features of astrophysical or instrumental origin by studying its spatial distribution. We demonstrate this approach by examining the recent claim of 0912.0552 regarding the possible DM origin of the 2.5 keV line in Chandra observations of the Milky Way satellite known as Willman 1. Our conservative strategy is to adopt a relatively large dark mass for Willman 1 and relatively small dark masses for the comparison objects. We analyze archival observations by XMM-Newton of M31 and Fornax dwarf spheroidal gala…
We present the status of dark matter searches performed by the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment using 7 TeV pp data collected by the CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2010 and 2011. The majority of the results shown here were obtained using 1.1 fb-1 of data. We give highlights from analyses searching for candidates such as WIMPs, gravitinos, axinos and TeV scale particles. All observations so far were found to be consistent with the Standard Model predictions. The search results were used to set exclusion limits on various new physics scenarios.
An analysis of sub-MeV dark photon as dark matter is given which is achieved with two hidden sectors, one of which interacts directly with the visible sector while the second has only indirect coupling with the visible sector. The formalism for the evolution of three bath temperatures for the visible sector and the two hidden sectors is developed and utilized in solution of Boltzmann equations coupling the three sectors. We present exclusion plots where the sub-MeV dark photon can be dark matter. The analysis can be extended to a multi-temperature universe with multiple hidden sectors and mult…
Many models of dark matter predict long-lived particles (LLPs) that can give rise to striking signatures at the LHC. Existing searches for displaced vertices are however tailored towards heavy LLPs. In this work we show that this bias severely affects their sensitivity to LLPs with masses at the GeV scale. To illustrate this point we consider two dark sector models with light LLPs that decay hadronically: a strongly-interacting dark sector with long-lived exotic mesons, and a Higgsed dark sector with a long-lived dark Higgs boson. We study the sensitivity of an existing ATLAS search for displa…
Next generation neutrino oscillation experiments like DUNE and T2HK are multi-purpose observatories, with a rich physics program beyond oscillation measurements. A special role is played by their near detector facilities, which are particularly well-suited to search for weakly coupled dark sector particles produced in the primary target. In this paper, we demonstrate this by estimating the sensitivity of the DUNE near detectors to the scattering of sub-GeV DM particles and to the decay of sub-GeV sterile neutrinos ("heavy neutral leptons"). We discuss in particular the importance of the DUNE-P…
The effect of the chosen analysis energy window on the results of a dark matter experiment is exemplified by the curious intersection of the exclusion plots of the XENON10 and the CDMS experiments. After proving that the narrow energy window XENON10 chose to analyze is indeed the cause of such intersection, a method to determine the high-energy extreme of the recoil energy window an experiment should use is obtained.
The current most stringent constraints for the existence of sub-GeV dark matter coupling to Standard Model via a massive vector boson $A^\prime$ were set by the NA64 experiment for the mass region $m_{A^\prime}\lesssim 250$ MeV, by analyzing data from the interaction of $2.84\cdot10^{11}$ 100-GeV electrons with an active thick target and searching for missing-energy events. In this work, by including $A^\prime$ production via secondary positron annihilation with atomic electrons, we extend these limits in the $200$-$300$ MeV region by almost an order of magnitude, touching for the first time t…
The IGEX Collaboration enriched 76Ge double-beta decay detectors are currently operating in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory with an overburden of 2450 m.w.e. A recent upgrade has made it possible to use them in a search for WIMPs. A new exclusion plot has been derived for WIMP-nucleon spin-independent interaction. To obtain this result, 30 days of data from one IGEX detector, which has an energy threshold of ~4 keV, have been considered. These data improve the exclusion limits derived from other germanium diode experiments in the ~50 GeV DAMA region, and show that with a moderate improveme…
We study the muon $(g-2)_μ$ anomaly in light of neutralino dark matter and the LHC. We scan the MSSM parameters relevant to $(g-2)_μ$ and focus on three distinct cases with different neutralino compositions. We find that the 2$σ$ range of $(g-2)_μ$ requires the smuon ($\tildeμ_1$) to be lighter than $\sim$ 500 (1000) GeV for $\tan β=10\,(50)$. Correspondingly the two lightest neutralinos, $\tildeχ_{1}^0, \tildeχ_{2}^0$, have to be lighter than $\sim$ 300 (650) GeV and 900 (1000) GeV respectively. We explore the prospects of searching the light smuon and neutralinos at the LHC, in conjunction w…
Directional detection of Dark Matter particles (DM) in the MeV mass range could be accomplished by studying electron recoils in large arrays of parallel carbon nanotubes. In a scattering process with a lattice electron, a DM particle might transfer sufficient energy to eject it from the nanotube surface. An external electric field is added to drive the electron from the open ends of the array to the detection region. The anisotropic response of this detection scheme, as a function of the orientation of the target with respect to the DM wind, is calculated, and it is concluded that no direct me…
Beam dump experiments have been used to search for new particles, $ϕ$, with null results interpreted in terms of limits on masses $m_ϕ$ and coupling constants $ε$. However these limits have been obtained by using approximations [including the Weizsäcker-Williams (WW) approximation] or Monte-Carlo simulations. We display methods to obtain the cross section and the resulting particle production rates without using approximations on the phase space integral or Monte-Carlo simulations. In our previous work we examined the case of the new scalar boson production; in this paper we explore all possib…
Using the results of our recent analysis of e^+e^- annihilation, we plot the curves for the diagonal and transition form factors of light hadrons in the time-like region up to the production threshold of an open charm quantum number. The comparison with existing data on the decays of J/ψinto such hadrons shows that some new resonance structures may be present in the mass range between 2 GeVand the J/ψmass. Searching them may help in a better understanding of the mass spectrum in both the simple and a more sophisticated quark models, and in revealing the details of the three-gluon mechanism of …
We revise the spin-dependent neutralino-nucleus elastic scattering comparing the formalisms and approximations found in literature for the momentum transfer dependent structure functions. We argue that one of the normalized structure functions of Divari, Kosmas, Vergados and Skouras is all that one needs to correctly take into account the detailed nuclear physics information provided by shell-model calculations. The factorization of the particle physics degrees of freedom from the nuclear physics momentum dependent structure functions implied by this formalism allows for a better understanding…
The annihilation of Weakly Interactive Massive Particles (WIMP) in the centre of the sun could give rise to neutrino fluxes. We study the prospects of searching for these neutrinos at the upcoming Iron CALorimeter (ICAL) detector to be housed at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO). We perform ICAL simulations to obtain the detector efficiencies and resolutions in order to simulate muon events in ICAL due to neutrinos coming from annihilation of WIMP in the mass range $m_χ= (3-100)$ GeV. The atmospheric neutrinos pose a major background for these indirect detection studies and can be red…
In a previous work, a classically scale invariant extension of the standard model was proposed, as a potential candidate for resolving the hierarchy problem, by minimally introducing a complex gauge singlet scalar, and generating radiative electroweak symmetry breaking by means of the Coleman- Weinberg Mechanism. Postulating the singlet sector to respect the CP-symmetry, the existence of a stable pseudoscalar dark matter candidate with a mass in the TeV range was demonstrated. More- over, the model predicted the presence of another physical CP-even Higgs boson (with suppressed tree-level coupl…
