Abstract:

Supernovae can reach temperatures upwards of 30 MeV, allowing them to produce vast quantities of new particles on the MeV scale. In this talk, I will discuss two different models of MeV-scale dark sectors produced in supernovae and their associated direct and indirect signals. Specifically, I will first discuss a model in which dark photons are produced within supernovae then decay well away from the star, resulting in novel electromagnetic signals that can be used to constrain dark photon parameter space. I will then transition into discussing a model of dark sector fermions, ultimately showing that a hot galactic flux of these particles from SN can be detected in WIMP detectors designed for GeV-scale dark matter. I will conclude with a discussion of future work on using directional detectors to identify this hot population of DM.