A largely model-independent probe of dark matter-nucleon interactions is proposed. Accelerated by gravity to relativistic speeds, local dark matter scattering against old neutron stars deposits kinetic energy that heats them to infrared blackbody temperatures. The resulting radiation could be detected by next generation telescopes such as James Webb, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European...
A significant part of dark matter could be made of compact objects, such as primordial black holes. In this talk I will discuss how to use Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) to directly test this hypothesis. FRBs are powerful and short radio emissions emanating from extragalactic sources. A compact component of the dark matter can act as a gravitational lens and create multiple images of a single FRB....
The direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter (DM) has received increased interest in the last few years. Recent proposals for experimental ideas using DM-electron scattering have opened up previously unexplored, but theoretically well-motivated, regions of parameter space. As these experiments increase their cross-section reach, they will start to become sensitive to astrophysical neutrinos....
We discuss the early stages of the MINER coherent neutrino scattering reactor experiment at Texas A&M University. We examine the solar neutrino background both as motivation for the development of new ultra-low threshold detectors to observe coherent scattering and for establishing a baseline event rate to assist in ongoing searches for dark matter. The latter allows for predictive...
In this talk, I will discuss a novel program of fixed-target searches for thermal-origin Dark Matter (DM), which couples inelastically to the Standard Model. Since the DM only interacts by transitioning to a heavier state, freeze-out proceeds via coannihilation and the unstable heavier state is depleted at later times. For sufficiently large mass splittings, direct detection is kinematically...
We investigate the detection prospects of a non-standard dark sector in the context of boosted dark matter. We consider a scenario where two stable particles have a large mass difference and the heavier particle accounts for most of dark matter in our current universe. The heavier candidate is assumed to have no interaction with the standard model particles at tree-level, hence evading...
The expansion rate of the universe had a strong influence on the origin of the dark matter abundance during the early stages of the universe's evolution, mainly prior to big-bang nucleosynthesis. Any departure of the expansion rate of the universe from the standard cosmological model during that time can modify the dark matter abundance. In this talk, I will explore the role played by a scalar...
We discuss a new alternative to the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) paradigm for dark matter. Rather than being determined by thermal freeze-out, the dark matter abundance in this scenario is set by dark matter decay, which is allowed for a limited amount of time just before the electroweak phase transition. More specifically, we consider fermionic singlet dark matter particles...