Physics (Internal)

Self-Destructing Dark Matter

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

Self-Destructing Dark Matter, a new class of dark matter models, will be presented. In this class of models, scattering off of a nucleus or an electron in the Earth can cause the dark matter to move from a long-lived state into a short-lived one. The short-lived state then decays to Standard Model particles, generating a dark matter signal with visible energy of order the dark matter mass rather than just its recoil. This leads to striking signals in large detectors with high energy thresholds. Examples of models which exhibit self-destruction, all inspired by bound state dynamics in the Standard Model will be presented.