Speaker
Description
Hidden sectors are well motivated theoretically, and there is increasingly focused experimental activity to probe them. In this talk, I will present the theoretical framework to probe such sectors in a model-independent manner. I will focus on sectors that communicate with the standard model through irrelevant portal operators. Such portals can be shown to arise naturally, on very general principles. I will focus on sectors with approximate scale invariance dynamics, and elucidate how this allows model-independent bounds to be derived. I will present constraints from various classes of experiments and explain the procedures and assumptions involved. The general picture that emerges is that these sectors are poorly constrained at the moment and points to the kind of future experimental facilities that will improve the reach.
(based on 2012.08537)
