Astroparticle Seminar

Dynamical Dark Matter: An Alternative Framework for Dark-Matter Physics

Brooks Thomas

Carleton

Over the years, a number of simple and elegant ideas have been advanced to explain the nature and origin of the mysterious dark matter in our universe. However, over the last decade, a variety of puzzling experimental results and tantalizing potential signals have emerged which are difficult for these simple proposals to explain without modification. These results should prompt us to consider whether there are any additional, well-motivated ways of addressing to the dark-matter problem which may have been overlooked because they do not conform to the conventional picture of what a dark matter candidate should “look like.”

In this talk, I present such an alternative framework for addressing the dark-matter problem -- one which we call Dynamical Dark Matter (DDM). Within the DDM framework, the requirement of dark-matter stability is replaced by a balancing between decay widths and cosmological abundances across a vast ensemble of individual dark-matter components whose collective behavior transcends that normally associated with traditional dark-matter candidates. In this talk, I provide an overview of the the DDM framework and discuss examples of theoretical contexts in which DDM ensembles naturally arise. I also discuss the phenomenological implications of DDM scenarios and, in particular, how DDM ensembles can potentially be distinguished from traditional dark-matter candidates experimentally at the next generation of direct- and indirect-detection experiments and at the LHC.