Conveners
Dark Sectors: Cosmological Aspects 1
- Malte Buschmann (Princeton University)
Many proposals for physics beyond the Standard Model give rise to a dark sector containing many degrees of freedom. In this talk, we discuss the cosmological implications of non-trivial dynamics that may arise within such dark sectors, focusing on decay processes which take place entirely among the dark constituents. First, we demonstrate that such decays can leave dramatic imprints on the...
In many scenarios beyond the traditional thermal paradigm, dark matter could be produced with a non-thermal (and sometimes highly nontrivial) primordial velocity distribution. The distribution of primordial dark-matter velocities can significantly influence the growth of cosmological structure. In principle, one can therefore exploit the halo-mass distribution in order to learn about the dark...
The viability of a given model for inflation is determined not only by the form of the inflaton potential, but also by the initial inflaton field configuration. In many models, field configurations which are otherwise well-motivated nevertheless fail to induce inflation, or fail to produce an inflationary epoch of duration sufficient to solve the horizon and flatness problems. In this...
In this talk I will show how to leverage cosmological data sets to search for new light–but not necessarily massless–degrees of freedom. These light relics arise ubiquitous in BSM theories, and their feeble interactions with the visible sector make them decouple in the early universe, and thus conserve significant number densities. Due to their small couplings, and large cosmic abundances,...
Despite its remarkable success, the standard $\Lambda$CDM paradigm has been challenged lately by significant tensions between different datasets. This has boosted interest in non-minimal dark sectors, which are theoretically well-motivated and inspire new search strategies for DM. With this in mind, we have developed a new and efficient version of the Boltzmann code CLASS that allows for one...
We consider how a modified cosmological history with a period of electroweak confinement could allow a WIMP dark matter candidate to escape current exclusion bounds. We consider an $SU(2)_L$ vector doublet fermionic dark matter candidate which confines with standard model fermions during this era. These composite particles interact, depleting the dark matter abundance. After these processes...
