Dorota Grabowska (UCB) “Detecting Dark Blobs”

Seminar Organizer


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Abstract: Most current dark matter detection strategies, including both direct and indirect efforts, are based on the assumption that the galactic dark matter number density is quite high, allowing for the detection of rare events. Such a paradigm arises naturally if the dark matter self-interactions are weak. However, strong interactions within the dark sector give rise to large composite objects whose detection requires a completely different experimental paradigm. In such theories, the energy transfer due to a single collision with a Standard Model particle tends to be small, below the energy threshold of many detectors. Fortunately, the cross section for such a scattering can be quite large, resulting in many interactions and large total energy deposition as the dark matter passes through a detector. These signals can be searched for with a multitude of different detection strategies, several of which I highlight in this talk.