Searching for hidden sectors via the vector portal

by Mathew Graham (SLAC)

Thursday 12 Dec 2013, 12:30 → 13:30 US/Pacific

Kavli Meeting Room - room 305 (SLAC)

There has recently been a flurry of activity around the idea of a new, "hidden" sector and it's relation to dark matter. This hidden sector couples weakly to the Standard Model through at least one of a limited number of portals. Via the vector portal, the Standard Model photon kinetically mixes with a new U1 gauge boson in the hidden sector (a "dark photon"). This presentation will lay out the current status and future prospects of searches for the dark photon, focusing primarily on the Heavy Photon Search experiment (HPS). Additionally, we will discuss possible experiments designed to search for light dark matter using high intensity proton or electron beam dumps. These two approaches (dark photon and light dark matter searches) are complimentary ways to explore the vector portal and both are necessary to obtain a complete picture of the hidden sector.

pictures hidden sector picture small picture

Slides Matt Graham slides