TH Cosmo Coffee

Isospin-violating dark matter from a double portal

by Andreas Goudelis (LAPTh)

Europe/Zurich
4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

4/2-011 - TH common room

CERN

15
Show room on map
Description
During the last few years, numerous puzzling signals have appeared in direct dark matter detection experiments that could potentially be interpreted as the result of low-mass dark matter scatterings off target nuclei. Interestingly, all of these signals seem to be in clear contradiction with the null findings of the XENON, LUX and recently super-CDMS experiments, at least in the framework of the most popular dark matter models. In an effort to resolve this contradiction, some groups have pointed out that there can be circumstances under which dark matter could interact differently with different kinds of nuclei. One such possibility is that dark matter could have different couplings to the proton and the neutron (isospin-violating dark matter). I will present a fairly simple model where such a situation can be realized, discuss the releavant constraints as well as the implications of the existence of such possibilities for direct dark matter detection.