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- Baum, Sebastian, 1990-
(author)
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Dark Matter, Ancient Rocks, a Band of Higgs Bosons, and a Big Collider : or, Models of New Physics and Some Ways to Probe Them
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The past ~ 50 years have seen a remarkable success of particle physics. In the 1970s, the Standard Model was formulated and in 2012 its final ingredient, the Higgs boson, was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Standard Model describes virtually all particle physics observable in the laboratory. However, despite this success, the Standard Model has a number of shortcomings. Some problems stem from its mathematical structure, most famously the hierarchy problem. Further, the Standard Model fails to describe the composition of our Universe, for example, it cannot explain the observed Dark Matter. Thus, the need for physics beyond the Standard Model is clear. A long series of experiments has been conducted to search for this new physics. Alas, these experiments came up empty handed.This thesis discusses two lines of work: 1) Arguably, the Higgs sector of the Standard Model is its least constrained part and simultaneously intimately related to many of the Standard Model's shortcomings. We discuss models extending the Higgs sector, both in a general and in a supersymmetric setting, and how they can be probed at the LHC. 2) A century after the first evidence for Dark Matter emerged, we still don't know what it is made up of. We discuss some models for Dark Matter, including axions and a particular model for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) Dark Matter. Then, we present some methods to search for WIMP Dark Matter, focusing on paleo-detectors, a proposed method where one would search for the traces of WIMP-nucleus interactions left in ancient minerals.
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| 2. |
- Bi, Xiao Jun, et al.
(author)
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Chapter 5 Dark Matter and New Physics Beyond the Standard Model with LHAASO
- 2022
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In: Chinese Physics C. - : IOP Publishing. - 1674-1137 .- 2058-6132. ; 46:3
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In order to reveal the nature of dark matter, it is crucial to detect its non-gravitational interactions with the standard model particles. The traditional dark matter searches focused on the so-called weakly interacting massive particles. However, this paradigm is strongly constrained by the null results of current experiments with high precision. Therefore there is a renewed interest of searches for heavy dark matter particles above TeV scale. The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) with large effective area and strong background rejection power is very suitable to investigate the gamma-ray signals induced by dark matter annihilation or decay above TeV scale. In this document, we review the theoretical motivations and background of heavy dark matter. We review the prospects of searching for the gamma-ray signals resulted from dark matter in the dwarf spheroidal satellites and Galactic halo for LHAASO, and present the projected sensitivities. We also review the prospects of searching for the axion-like particles, which are a kind of well motivated light pseudo-scalars, through the LHAASO measurement of the very high energy gamma-ray spectra of astrophysical sources.
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