New Avenues to Search for sub-GeV Dark Matter

Speaker: Rouven Essig, Stony Brook

When: November 12, 2015 (Thu), 03:30PM to 04:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 595

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

Dark matter with MeV to GeV masses is a theoretically and phenomenologically appealing possibility. In this talk, I will provide a broad overview of the motivation, models, constraints, and novel searches for such dark matter. I will focus on how direct detection experiments can probe this largely unexplored mass range and present several search strategies. A particularly promising possibility is that dark matter scatters off electrons, causing ionization of atoms in a detector target material, which can lead to single- or few-electron events. I will review existing constraints from XENON10 data, and discuss how other experiments like SuperCDMS and DAMIC, as well as new dedicated experiments, could significantly improve the sensitivity. I will also discuss several other search strategies for sub-GeV dark matter, including colliders, high-intensity fixed-target experiments, and indirect detection.