Registration Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center

Welcome and practical information

• Torsten Bringmann

Opening by DSU chair

• carlos munoz (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center

Evidence for Dark Matter

• Paolo Gondolo (University of Utah)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center

Indirect Dark Matter detection: Challenges and opportunities (Indirect Dark Matter Detection)

• Pasquale Serpico (LAPTH, Annecy-le-vieux)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I will briefly review the current status of WIMP indirect dark matter detection, identifying recent progresses and the hurdles to overcome in order to improve sensitivity. Particular attention will be paid to the charged cosmic ray channels, although some considerations will also concern other domains, such as gamma rays. I will then discuss how indirect probes also have some chances in constraining (or possibly detecting) DM models beyond the WIMP scenario, which are often hard to identify at (if not beyond the reach of) direct or collider searches.

Direct Dark Matter search: status and perspectives (Direct Dark Matter Detection)

• Nicolao Fornengo (University of Torino and INFN)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center Theoretical review on the direct detection search for dark matter.

Searching for Dark Matter at Colliders (Dark Matter at Particle Colliders)

• Kathryn Zurek (LBNL)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center

How to stop worrying about pulsars and start looking for dark matter: The Fermi Galactic center GeV excess and beyond (Indirect Dark Matter Detection)

• Christoph Weniger (University of Amsterdam)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center One of the long-standing challenges in indirect dark matter searches is to understand the origin of the pronounced emission of 1-3 GeV photons that is seen in Fermi LAT data in the Galactic bulge and at the Galactic center. The arguably most exciting interpretation is that it is caused by the annihilation of dark matter particles. However, before making such a claim all possible backgrounds need to be assessed with utmost care. I will here show that in contrast to previous claims millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are a valid and rather likely explanation. What is more, the MSP hypothesis can explain the non-Gaussian noise that we detected in the gamma-ray emission from the inner Galaxy, with at least 10 sigma significance, using a new dedicated wavelet decomposition analysis. The power spectrum of dust-traced gas at small angular scales, as well as the projected density of other Galactic sources is far too low to account for this signal. I will present realistic strategies of how upcoming targeted radio searches and surveys can establish or refute the MSP hypothesis with high statistical significance. If we fail to find bulge MSPs in radio soon, the dark matter interpretation of the Fermi GeV excess will become much more likely again. I will close with an outlook on indirect dark matter searches in the next ten years.

Antimatter and photons from cosmic rays (Indirect Dark Matter Detection)

• Michael Kachelriess (NTNU)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center After a brief review of the standard diffusion approach to the propagation of cosmic rays (CR), I discuss as alternative method the calculation of individual CR trajectories. The results obtained with this approach suggest that CR propagate strongly anisotropic, and that the antimatter fluxes observed are dominated by a single local source. Finally, I discuss different approaches to predict antiproton production and their theoretical uncertainties.

Dark energy: current and future observations (Dark Energy and Modified Gravity)

• David Bacon (University of Portsmouth)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I will give an overview of the current state of dark energy research, from an observational point of view. Current and future probes of dark energy will be discussed; I will examine the latest constraints on dark energy physics from cosmological surveys, and describe future prospects for yet more powerful measurements in the coming decade.

Dark Energy Theory Overview (Dark Energy and Modified Gravity)

• Ed Copeland (Nottingham University)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center The problem facing us with dark energy has manifested itself through the many theoretical models that have been published, all with the same goal, to explain the late time acceleration of the Universe. I will try and summarise the state of play with the models, recap the original cosmological constant problem which prevents many of us from simply accepting there is a constant energy density driving the acceleration, and discuss some recent attempts to address the problem. Throughout we will see the need for fine tuning which enters with pretty much every model, and we will see how particle physics considerations can have a huge impact on the type of models that are consistent with the data.

Detecting Black Holes with LIGO

• Matthew Evans (MIT)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) recently made the first direct detection of gravitational waves; minute distortions in space-time caused by cataclysmic events far away in the universe. I will talk about the source of the signal we detected, the physics behind the detectors, and prospects for the future of this emerging field.

Unveiling dark energy with the large scale structure: the theoretical side of the challenge (Dark Energy and Modified Gravity)

• Alessandra Silvestri (Leiden University)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I will focus on the challenge posed by dark energy and discuss theoretical issues involved in finding an optimal framework to unveil its nature from upcoming high precision measurements of the large scale structure, giving an overview of recent progress.

PUBLIC LECTURE

• Katherine Freese (University of Michigan)

The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe, from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars, constitute only 5% of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The remaining 95% is made up of a recipe of 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy, both nonluminous components whose nature remains a mystery. Freese will recount the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Knut Lundmark and Fritz Zwicky, the astronomers who coined the term "dark matter" in the 1930's, to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists contend that dark matter consists of fundamental particles known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. Billions of them pass through our bodies every second without us even realizing it, yet their gravitational pull is capable of whirling stars and gas at breakneck speeds around the centers of galaxies, and bending light from distant bright objects. In this talk Freese will provide an overview of this cosmic cocktail, including the evidence for the existence of dark matter in galaxies. Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving this mystery and this talk will provide the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind's quest to understand the universe.

Evidence for Dark Matter from Astronomical Observations

• Douglas Clowe

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I will review evidence for dark matter's existence from astronomical observations. I will focus primarily evidence from dwarf galaxies and galaxy clusters, but also discuss results from cosmological observations of the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure.

Towards an Effective THeory Of Structure formation (ETHOS) (Alternatives to LambdaCDM Cosmology)

• Jesus Zavala Franco (University of Iceland)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center Although there is substantial gravitational evidence for the existence of dark matter, its particle nature remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern physics. The favourite theoretical model, Cold Dark Matter (CDM), assumes that non-gravitational dark matter interactions are irrelevant for galaxy formation and evolution. Surprisingly, current astronomical observations allow significant departures from the CDM hypothesis that have a relevant impact on our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. Moreover, the observed properties of the smallest galaxies have been a consistent challenge for the CDM model. In this talk, I will argue that to explain galaxy formation and evolution in the broadest sense, an effective dark matter theory must contain a wider range of dark matter particle physics. I will describe the first steps we have taken towards developing ETHOS and present some of its applications.

Announcements about the Social Program

• Joern Kersten (University of Bergen)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center

Dark matter searches in ATLAS (Dark Matter at Particle Colliders)

• Edward Diehl (University of Michigan (US))

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center Dark matter particles may be produced at the LHC in combination with other particles, typically from initial state radiation. We present results from the ATLAS experiment from searches for phenomena with jets, photons, heavy quarks, electroweak gauge bosons, or Higgs bosons recoiling against large missing transverse momentum. The measurements are interpreted using several theoretical frameworks including simplified models with pair production of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, effective field theories, and other beyond the Standard Model scenarios. Constraints from dijet searches are compared with results from the “Mono-X” searches to provide a combined interpretation in the context of simplified models.

Dark Matter Searches at CMS and Future Plans (Dark Matter at Particle Colliders)

• Deborah Pinna (Universitaet Zuerich (CH))

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center The existence of dark matter, indicated by astronomical observations, is one of the main proofs of physics beyond the standard model. Despite its abundance, dark matter has not been directly observed yet. This talk reviews the latest results and future plans of searches for dark matter at the CMS experiment at the LHC.

Unitarity and Dark Matter -- implications for collider searches and indirect detection (Dark Matter at Particle Colliders)

• Nicole Bell (University of Melbourne)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center Will discuss issues related to unitarity and gauge invariance of DM interactions, covering both collider searches and indirect detection.

Status on Decaying Dark Matter (and other very weakly interacting candidates) (Dark Matter Models)

• Laura Covi (Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen (DE))

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center We review model of decaying Dark Matter and other very weakly interacting DM candidates and present the status of theoretical developments for those models and DM searches both in indirect detection and at colliders.

Probing the nature of dark matter with gamma rays: status of the Fermi LAT searches and prospects for the CTA (Indirect Dark Matter Detection)

• Gabrijela Zaharijas (University of Nova Gorica)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center High-energy gamma rays are one of the most promising tools to constrain or reveal the nature of Dark Matter (DM), in particular the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP) models. During the almost eight years of the Fermi satellite mission, the data from its Large Area Telescope (LAT) were used to set constraints on the WIMP annihilation cross section which cut well into the theoretically-motivated region of parameter space for WIMP masses below 100 GeV. At the same time, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is well into its prototyping phase and will soon offer a chance to probe a complementary parameter space of heavier dark matter (from O(200 GeV) up to several tens of TeV ), with unprecedented sensitivity. In this talk I will describe methods used to search for evidence of dark matter with the LAT, and review the status of the searches. I will discuss projections of the expected sensitivities with continued LAT data taking, together with the latest sensitivity predictions on the various targets with CTA.

SO(10) Dark Matter Models (Dark Matter Models)

• Keith Olive (University of Minnesota)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center There are several reasons supersymmetric models are appealing as a candidate for beyond the standard models physics. These include help with gauge coupling unification, the gauge hierarchy problem, the stabilization of the electroweak vacuum, radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, dark matter, and perhaps an improvement to low energy phenomenology. The lack of evidence for low energy supersymmetry at the LHC implies a supersymmetry scale in excess a TeV. While this is consistent (and even helpful) with a Higgs boson mass at $\approx$ 125 GeV, simple supersymmetric models with scalar and gaugino mass universality are being pushed into strips of parameter space. In contrast, non-supersymmetric grand unified theories such as SO(10) may provide equivalent benefits to all of the above issues normally associated with supersymmetry, including a dark matter candidate. Because of the presence of an intermediate scale, these theories may unify gauge couplings, provide for neutrino masses and a suitably long lived proton. The construction of SO(10) dark matter models will be discussed.

Hunting for SUSY and decaying gravitino DM with the µνSSM (Dark Matter Models)

• Carlos Munoz (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid & IFT)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center The µνSSM solves the µ-problem of SUSY models simply using right-handed neutrinos ν’s, while simultaneously explains the origin of neutrino masses. In this context, novel signatures of SUSY at the LHC are present through the new states of the model. On the other hand, since R parity is broken, a decaying gravitino turns out to be an interesting candidate for dark matter which can be searched through gamma-ray observations such as those of the Fermi Large Area Telescope.

Cosmological tests of modified gravity (Dark Energy and Modified Gravity)

• Kazuya Koyama (University of Portsmouth)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I review recent progress in the construction of modified gravity models as alternatives to dark energy as well as the development of cosmological tests of gravity. Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) has been tested accurately within the local universe i.e. the Solar System, but this leaves the possibility open that it is not a good description of gravity at the largest scales in the Universe. In 1998, astronomers made the surprising discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, not slowing down. Within the framework of GR, the acceleration would originate from an unknown dark energy. Alternatively, it could be that there is no dark energy and GR itself is in error on cosmological scales. In this talk, I first give an overview of recent developments in modified gravity theories. I then focus on common properties these models share, such as screening mechanisms they use to evade the stringent Solar System tests. Once armed with a theoretical knowledge of modified gravity models, I move on to discuss how we can test modifications of gravity on cosmological scales. Since screening mechanisms leave distinct signatures in the non-linear structure formation, I review novel astrophysical tests of gravity using clusters, dwarf galaxies and stars.

The case for dark matter self interactions (Alternatives to LambdaCDM Cosmology)

• Kai Ronald Schmidt-Hoberg (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DE))

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I will review motivations for the existence of self interacting dark matter and discuss possible astrophysical observables. Self-interactions of dark matter particles can potentially lead to an observable separation between the dark matter halo and the stars of a galaxy moving through a region of large dark matter density. Such a separation has recently been observed in a galaxy falling into the core of the galaxy cluster Abell 3827. I discuss the DM self-interaction cross section needed to reproduce the observed effects.

Small-Scale Structure and Interacting Dark Matter and Radiation (Alternatives to LambdaCDM Cosmology)

• Basudeb Dasgupta (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai)

Room: Egget auditorium in the UiB Student Center I will review attempts to address the small-scale problems of Lambda-CDM using a combination of dark matter self-interactions and dark matter interactions with a dark radiation-like species. We will see that most models are rather tightly constrained. New results outlining the role of non-perturbative corrections to these interactions will be presented.