Theory Group Seminar

Dr. Graham Kribs, University of Oregon

"The Inelastic Frontier of Dark Matter"

2:00pm, RLM 7.104

Abstract: I'll discuss the unusual characteristics of dark matter that dominantly scatters inelastically off nuclei in a direct detection experiment.  If the inelasticity is of order hundreds of keV, the dominant scattering can occur through weak-strength (or larger) interactions, putting the "W" back into "WIMP". Three benchmark models - one "vanilla" supersymmetric, one dark photon, and one composite - will demonstrate the ubiquity of this scattering mechanism.  The main lesson is that existing direct detection experiments could be sensitive to the inelastic frontier, but require analyzing high recoil data that has historically been ignored or discarded.