Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology) |
Events During the Week of October 26th through November 2nd, 2014
Monday, October 27th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
- Galactic Center Gamma-ray Excess from a Dark Shower
- Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Dean Robinson, University of California, Berkeley
- Abstract: The reported excess of gamma-rays, emitted from an extended region around the galactic center, has a distribution and rate suggestive of an origin in dark matter (DM) annihilations. However, the conventional annihilation channels into standard model (SM) b quarks or tau leptons may be in tension with various experimental constraints on antiproton and positron fluxes. We'll discuss a framework that is free from such constraints. The key idea is that the mediators between the dark matter and the SM are themselves part of a strongly coupled sector. DM annihilation produces a dark hadron shower that in turn decays to photons, but without other significant associated cosmic ray production. We'll also discuss an explicit realization of this framework and its phenomenology.
- Host: Ran Lu
Wednesday, October 29th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Thursday, October 30th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Friday, October 31st, 2014
- Evaluating the Thermal WIMP Paradigm in the Light of Anomalies in 2014
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Kuver Sinha, Syracuse University
- Abstract: I'll look back at some of the anomalies we have seen this year: the "dark matter keV line", the mild, persistent evidence for dark radiation, and the niggling excesses in the charged lepton + jets (leptoquark search) and dilepton (SUSY search) final states at the LHC. I'll discuss prospects for the thermal WIMP paradigm in the light of these anomalies. I'll also discuss the fast-disappearing BICEP anomaly, and whether future polarization experiments will be able to give us, unambiguously, the scale of inflation.
- Host: Ran Lu