Dark Matter in the Cosmos The Hunt to find it in the Laboratory

by John D. Vergados

at Particles and Fields Seminar

Mon, 13 Jun 2016, 14:00
Physics building (#54) room 207

Abstract

Matter constitutes 30 of the energy content of the Universe The remaining 70 is what is called dark energy which exhibits unusual repulsive gravitational interactions On the matter sheet only 5 is of known nature i e matter such as found in atoms in stars in planets etc From observations on all astrophysical and cosmological scales we know that most of it i e 25 is dark matter DM of unknown nature The nature of DM is one of the most important open problems in science The ongoing hunt for DM is multi pronged and interdisciplinary involving cosmology and astrophysics particle and nuclear physics as well as detector technology In this talk we will focus on the direct detection of the dark matter constituents the so called weakly interacting massive particles WIMPs in underground labs The detection consists of measuring the energy deposited in the detector by the recoiling nucleus after its elastic collision with a WIMP spin independent or spin induced In obtaining the event rates one needs models about the WIMP interaction and density in our vicinity as well as its velocity distribution No events have so far been observed only exclusion plots on the nucleon cross sections have been obtained which will be discussed Since the expected rates are very small and the usual experimental signature is not different from that of the backgrounds we will discuss some special signatures that might aid in the analysis of the experiments such as the time dependence of the signal modulation effect and the option of inelastic scattering possible in some special targets by detecting rays following the de excitation of the nucleus

Created on 07-06-2016 by Bar Lev, Yevgeny (ybarlev)
Updaded on 07-06-2016 by Bar Lev, Yevgeny (ybarlev)