Searching for the dark sector: New probes at current and future experiments

Nguyen, Rachel

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127136 Copy

Description

Title

Searching for the dark sector: New probes at current and future experiments

Author(s)

Nguyen, Rachel

Issue Date

2024-08-06

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Kahn, Yonatan

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Shelton, Jessie

Committee Member(s)

• Goldschmidt, Elizabeth
• Yunes, Nicolas

Department of Study

Physics

Discipline

Physics

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• particle physics
• Beyond Standard Model
• dark matter
• dark sector

Abstract

The nature of dark matter suggests that our understanding of our fundamental particles is incomplete. There could be a dark sector of particles that are not charged under Standard Model gauge symmetries that would interact very weakly with Standard Model particles. Particles in the dark sector could be used to explain the nature of dark matter as well as other theory problems that remain in particle physics. In this thesis, I will explore a sample of dark sector particle models and discuss new methods to search for these particles at upcoming experiments. First, I will motivate three dark sector particles - the dark photon, millicharged particle, and axion - and discuss their current detection efforts and constraints. Then I will discuss a new experimental proposal to detect axion dark matter using multiple haloscopes. Currently axion haloscope experiments only have information about the dark matter speed distribution, but with multiple haloscopes they gain additional information about the dark matter velocity distribution. Next, I will discuss a new production channel for dark photons at proton beam dump experiments through charged pion bremsstrahlung. Proton beam dump experiments produce many charged pions which can scatter off the nuclei in the target and radiate off a dark photon. The large number of high energy charged pions can potentially produce a significant number of GeV-scale dark photons at beam dump experiments. Lastly, we will extend this production mechanism to millicharged particles and heavy axions. We will calculate the number of signal events we can detect for each particle and compare the signal events from charged pion scattering to existing projections and constraints.

Graduation Semester

2024-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127136

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Rachel Nguyen

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