Physics and Astronomy Colloquium
Light dark matter and the LDMX experiment
Presented by Dr. Bertrand Echenard (Caltech)
Elucidating the nature of dark matter is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary fundamental physics. Among the vast landscape of theoretical possibilities, dark matter originating as a thermal relic in the early Universe presents many appealing features. This paradigm also greatly restricts the range of possible dark matter masses to the ~ MeV - 100 TeV region. Considerable experimental attention has been given to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles in the upper end of this window, while sub-GeV dark matter remains largely unexplored. Interestingly, light dark matter could be realized in simple, predictive models testable in accelerator-based experiments. The Light Dark Matter eXperiment (LDMX) is a proposed electron-beam fixed-target experiment using a missing momentum approach to probe dark matter in the MeV-GeV range with unique sensitivity, and provide information about its mass if a signal is observed. The experiment can also probe a large variety of models of light new physics and perform measurements critical for next-generation neutrino experiments. In this talk we will review the physics of light dark matter, the main experimental challenges in accelerator-based searches, and the LDMX approach to uniquely explore these possibilities.abmool
3:30 pm, Friday, April 7, 2023
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