Speaker: Christopher Jackson, University of Texas at Arlington
Abstract: With the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, much of the attention in the particle physics community has turned to illuminating the true nature of dark matter. Out of the numerous possible scenarios studied in the literature, one interesting scenario involves the case where dark matter (much like the Higgs boson) has enhanced couplings to the most massive particles in the Standard Model (e.g., W and Z bosons, top quarks and/or the Higgs boson itself). In this talk, I will discuss one particular model where dark matter couples exclusively to the right-handed top quark (which we dub aEurooeTop portal dark matteraEuro or TPDM). In this situation, the possibility of detecting dark matter in direct-detection experiments such as LUX is highly suppressed and one must turn to other types of searches. I will present the results of a preliminary study on the feasibility of detecting TPDM either at the LHC or through indirect searches. In particular, I will show that this type of model has very interesting signatures in gamma rays.