Physics Theory Seminar with Matthew Baumgart on The Future of Thermal Relic Dark Matter

The idea that dark matter is nothing more than a “heavy neutrino” that froze out after reheating has long been a seductive one. Indirect detection experiments are just now entering an era where the simplest candidate thermal relic models can be excluded. We will survey the status of current & near-future observations of the galactic center and dwarf spheroidal galaxies to rule on low-dimensional representations of SU(2) as dark matter. This will include preliminary results from my collaborators and I at the VERITAS telescope in southern Arizona showing a new limit on wino dark matter from our study of dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.  We will then discuss efforts to build and test a wider class of thermal-relic candidates whose mass can range up to the Planck scale.

Baumgart is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics.  He is a high energy theorist, interested in particle physics, cosmology, and gravity.  His research employs effective field theory, a formalism that efficiently selects relevant degrees of freedom at an energy scale of interest. He applies it to topics in beyond the Standard Model particle physics and questions about cosmological spacetimes.

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