Physics Theory Seminar with Gonzalo Herrera Moreno on New multi-messenger probes of dark matter and the cosmic neutrino background

Moreno is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Virginia Tech Department of Physics. His research interests are centered on the field of Particle Phenomenology and Astroparticle Physics.

Abstract: There is recent evidence for the acceleration of cosmic rays in the vicinity of some supermassive black holes, where the density of dark matter particles is expected to be very large. Cosmic rays may cool via scatterings with the dark matter in these environments, suppressing the emission of high-energy neutrinos and gamma-rays, and further yielding a flux of boosted dark matter particles directly detectable on Earth. I will show that these phenomenological probes allow to constrain new parameter space of light and/or inelastic dark matter models, probing well motivated thermal and non-thermal targets. I will further discuss the scatterings of cosmic rays with the cosmic neutrino background in these sources, which allows us to set world-leading direct constraints to date on the cosmic neutrino background.

This lecture was made possible by the William C. Ferguson fund.