Related papers: Getting a THUMP from a WIMP
Supersymmetric Twin Higgs models allow for reducing the fine-tuning with respect to Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model by protecting the mass of the Higgs boson by additional, accidental global symmetry. This class of models introduce…
Abundance of stable charged massive particles (CHAMPs) is severely constrained by their searches inside sea water. We examine whether inflation with low reheat temperature can sufficiently dilute the abundance to evade this severe bound on…
The Higgs doublet can mediate a long-range interaction between multi-TeV particles coupled to the Weak interactions of the Standard Model, while its emission can lead to very rapid bound-state formation processes and bound-to-bound…
We present a successful inflation model based on $\lambda \phi^4$ potential in which a Standard Model (SM) singlet inflaton $\phi$, with mass of around a TeV or less, also plays the role of a weakly interacting scalar dark matter particle…
Sub-GeV thermal relic dark matter typically requires the existence of a light mediator particle. We introduce the light two-Higgs-doublet portal, illustrated by a minimal UV-complete model for sub-GeV dark matter with kinematically…
A thermal relic, often referred to as a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), is a particle produced during the early evolution of the Universe whose present (relic) abundance depends only on its mass and its thermally averaged…
Dark Matter could be a composite state of a confining sector with an approximate scale symmetry. We consider the case where the associated pseudo-Goldstone boson, the dilaton, mediates its interactions with the Standard Model. When the…
We demonstrate the existence of a generic, efficient and purely gravitational channel producing a significant abundance of dark relics during reheating after the end of inflation. The mechanism is present for any inert scalar with the…
Many composite Higgs models predict the existence of vector-like quarks with masses outside the reach of the LHC, e.g. $m_Q \gtrsim 2$ TeV, in particular if these models contain a dark matter candidate. In such models the mass of the new…
The evolution of the Universe between inflation and the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis is difficult to probe and largely unconstrained. This ignorance profoundly limits our understanding of dark matter: we cannot calculate its thermal…
Thermal freeze-out is a compelling framework for naturally generating the dark matter abundance. We systematically study a broad range of dark matter and mediator particle combinations that can viably realize thermal freeze-out, focusing on…
The possibility that mirror matter with masses in the several hundred GeV- TeV range exists is explored. Mirror matter appears quite naturally in many unified models of particle interactions both in GUTs and in strings often in vector-like…
Weakly Interactive Massive Particles (WIMPs) are the most widely studied candidate particles forming the cold dark matter (CDM) whose existence can be inferred from a wealth of astrophysical and cosmological observations. In the framework…
The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. Modern particle theories naturally provide viable cold dark matter candidates with masses in…
The report describes the research program on the development of ultra-low-energy germanium detectors, with emphasis on WIMP dark matter searches. A threshold of 100 eV is achieved with a 20 g detector array, providing a unique probe to the…
Macroscopic dark matter like nontopological solitons can form either via the fusion and accumulation of free particles or during cosmological phase transitions. Both mechanisms can create dark matter with large masses ranging from TeV to…
In direct dark matter detection experiments, conventional elastic scattering of WIMPs results in exponentially falling recoil spectra. In contrast, theories of WIMPs with excited states can lead to nuclear recoil spectra that peak at finite…
The recent high energy electron and positron flux observed by the DAMPE experiment indicates possible excess events near 1.4 TeV. Such an excess may be evidence of dark matter annihilations or decays in a dark matter subhalo that is located…
In the framework of Left-Right symmetric model, we investigate an interesting scenario, in which the so-called VEV seesaw problem can be naturally solved with Z_2 symmetry. In such a scenario, we find a pair of stable weakly interacting…
We show that a thermal relic which decouples from the standard model (SM) plasma while relativistic can be a viable dark matter (DM) candidate, if the decoupling is followed by a period of entropy dilution that heats up the SM, but not the…