I explore the possibility of dark matter being composed of stable scalar glueballs from a confining dark SU(N) gauge theory. The relic abundance of these glueballs is studied for the first time in a thermal effective theory, using an effective potential fitted by lattice simulations. The predicted relic abundance is smaller than previously believed. Moreover, this framework can be easily...
Hidden sectors provide a simple explanation for the origin of dark matter. What is the symmetry of such a hidden sector? One possibility is that the hidden sector is related to the Standard Model gauge group via a discrete or "mirror" symmetry. Such a Mirror Standard Model has three main advantages: 1) It provides a natural dark matter candidate in the lightest stable mirror particle, namely...
Many models of Dark Matter (DM) have been proposed to accommodate the overwhelming evidence from cosmological and astrophysical sources. One popular category of such models are simplified models, which extend the Standard Model (SM) with a singlet DM particle and a mediator as a portal to the SM. In this talk I will present the results of various global fits of simplified models of DM, in...
While the experimental program to directly detect light dark matter is proceeding full steam ahead, the theoretical one is at a crossroads. I will review the status of both, highlighting the obstacles theories of sub-GeV dark matter must overcome. I will detail two such benchmarks future direct detection experiments will explore.
An overview of QCD-like strongly interacting dark matter.
The observed dark matter relic abundance may be explained by different mechanisms, such as thermal freeze-out/freeze-in, with one or more symmetric/asymmetric components. In this work we investigate the role played by asymmetries in determining the yield and nature of dark matter in scenarios with more than one dark matter particle. In particular, we show that the energy density of a particle...
WIMP particles down to MeV-scale masses can be thermal relic dark matter candidates, provided they fulfill two requirements. These dictate what kind of models can realise them.
First, to have a sufficiently large annihilation rate in the early Universe, a new light mediator particle coupled to the light SM degrees of freedom is necessary. Due to the chiral structure of the SM, the number of...
We consider the phenomenological nightmare scenario where dark matter is only coupled gravitationally, thinking of black holes as probes. We choose to focus on wave dark matter because an oscillating massive scalar endows a black hole with hair, whose profile we study.
We examine some assumptions implicit in the existing literature, and we do so by taking a fully analytic approach. We...
A cosmic string-wall network is associated with the breaking of a U(1) global symmetry into a discrete Z(N) symmetry with N>1. Its annihilation due to a small bias between the N minima is accompanied by “catastrogenesis” (from the greek for annihilation), the production of pseudo-Goldstone bosons (pGBs) - e.g. axions, ALPs, or majorons - gravitational waves, and primordial black holes...
