Jul 4 – 11, 2012
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Australia/Melbourne timezone
ICHEP2012 - 36th International Conference for High Energy Physics

Universal behavior in the scattering of heavy, weakly interacting dark matter on nuclear targets

Jul 7, 2012, 11:15 AM
15m
Room 216 (Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre)

Room 216

Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

Melbourne Australia
Parallel Sessions Track 11. Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology Room 216 - Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology -TR11

Speaker

Prof. Richard Hill (University of Chicago (US))

Description

We introduce heavy particle effective field theory techniques to isolate universal properties and to systematically study the QCD anatomy of dark matter direct detection. In particular: Particles that are heavy compared to the electroweak scale ($M \gg m_W$), and that are charged under electroweak SU(2) gauge interactions display universal properties such as a characteristic fine structure in the mass spectrum induced by electroweak symmetry breaking, and an approximately universal cross section for scattering on nuclear targets. The heavy particle effective theory framework is developed to compute these properties. As illustration, the spin independent cross section for low-velocity scattering on a nucleon is evaluated in the limit $M \gg m_W$, including complete leading-order matching onto quark and gluon operators, renormalization analysis, and systematic treatment of perturbative and hadronic-input uncertainties.

Primary author

Prof. Richard Hill (University of Chicago (US))

Co-author

Mikhail Solon (University of Chicago)

Presentation materials