Particle Physics Seminar: Roadmap to Thermal Dark Matter Beyond the Unitarity Bound

Abstract:

I will discuss the general properties of the freezeout of a thermal relic.  It has long been thought that a thermal dark matter candidate has its mass bounded above by around 100 TeV, according to the so-called unitary bound. I will show that a thermal dark matter candidate, much like the WIMP, can have mass well beyond this, all the way up to the Planck scale.  Going beyond the maximal masses allowed for freezeout via dark matter self-annihilations predicts that there are nearly degenerate states with the dark matter and that the dark matter is generically metastable. 
 

Seminar Organizers: Dr. Michael Geller & Dr. Adi Ashkanzi