Physics (Internal)

Non-Abelian Dark Matter and Dark Radiation

This event is part of the PhD Final Oral Exams.

Examining Committee:

Abstract: Martin Schmaltz, Andrew Cohen, Pankaj Mehta, Emanuel Katz, Edward Kearns

In this talk I propose a new alternative to the Cold Dark Matter scenario, in which the dark sector contains a dark matter particle charged under the Standard Model SU(2) gauge group and also charged under an additional SU(N) dark gauge group. I focus on the case in which the dark gauge group has a coupling constant much smaller than the Standard Model gauge couplings. In this limit the confinement scale of the dark sector is negligibly small and the dark gauge bosons are a new type of relativistic degree of freedom during all times in the cosmological history. I first briefly describe the changes in the usual searches for dark matter that arise because of this additional non-Abelian structure. After this I discuss the effects of the dark gauge bosons on the Cosmic Microwave Background and also show that the interactions between dark matter and the dark gauge bosons give rise to a new regime in the evolution of dark matter overdensities. In the end I briefly discuss how this model can help solve current tensions between Planck and Large Scale Structure data.