Search for Dark Matter Production in Association with Bottom Quarks

Speaker: Michael Kruskal

When: August 14, 2015 (Fri), 10:00AM to 11:00AM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 595

This event is part of the PhD Final Oral Exams.

Dissertation Committee: Steve Ahlen, John Butler, Ed Kearns, Michael El-Batanouny, Claudio Chamon

Abstract: Despite making up over 80% of the matter in the universe, very little is known about dark matter. Its only well-established property is that it interacts gravitationally, but does not interact with ordinary matter through any of the other known forces. Specific details such as the number of dark matter particles, their quantum properties, their interactions, and even their particle nature remain unknowns that are only loosely constrained by experiments. In this dissertation I describe a novel search for dark matter with preferential couplings to heavy quarks, using proton-proton collisions at ATLAS with the Large Hadron Collider. With a model-independent framework, comparisons are made to results obtained from other dark matter searches, and new limits are set on the interaction cross-section.

Kruskal