Looking for the WIMP next door

  • June 5, 2017, 2:00 pm US/Central
  • Jessie Shelton, UIUC

Dark matter (DM) freezing out in a hidden sector is a simple and compelling scenario for the missing 25% of our universe, which can parametrically explain null results in searches to date.  I will demonstrate that the requirement that the dark sector was once in thermal equilibrium with the SM defines a UV-insensitive cosmological history for DM with a bounded parameter space and  potentially observable consequences.  I will show how cosmic and terrestrial searches for DM depend on the choice of leading interaction, and highlight the key role of direct detection searches.