4D Seminar: Orion Ning (Berkeley) “Galactic Axion Factories: Stellar Populations and X-Ray Signals for Axion Searches”
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) can have weak couplings to the Standard Model which may be magnified in extreme astrophysical environments, i.e. stars, providing unique and exciting pathways toward observational signatures. In this talk, I will discuss the novel idea of how axion production at the galactic stellar population level can manifest in particularly powerful probes for axion physics. In … Read More
4 Seminar: Kailash Raman (UCB) “Dwarf galaxy J-factors from semi-analytic modeling”
Abstract: Dark matter dominated dwarf galaxies are excellent targets to constrain thermal dark matter annihilation, due to their clean background in gamma-ray regime. However, the common practice in the community for estimating the J-factor, a key component in calculating the strength of the annihilation signal, may be prone to systematic uncertainties. In this talk, I will discuss a new method … Read More
4D Seminar: Eve Schoen (UCB) “Is it Dark Matter? Revisiting the Galactic Center Excess with Convolutional Neural Networks”
4D Seminar: Tom Melia (IPMU) “The dark matter problem as a topsy-turvy version of the strong CP problem”
Abstract: The vacuum states of QCD generically break CP symmetry, and are parameterised by the ‘QCD theta’ variable. The strong CP problem arises because experiment shows that the amount of QCD CP violation must be exceedingly small, at odds with our generic expectation. This problem has a dynamical solution – the QCD axion – which zeroes any observable effects of CP … Read More
4D Seminar: Pouya Asadi (University of Oregon) “Confining Dark Sectors: from Novel Dynamics to Rich Phenomenology”
Abstract:Potential non-minimal dynamics governing the dark matter interactions can have drastic implications for their phenomenology and can inform our search strategies. In this talk I advocate for meticulous studies of a broad class of next-to-minimal models, namely Confining Dark Sectors. I will argue that such dark sectors establish a general framework that encompasses many simplified models of particle dark matter and serve … Read More