Faculty of Physics University of Warsaw > Events > Seminars > "High Energy, Cosmology and Astro-particle Physics (HECA)" Seminar

"High Energy, Cosmology and Astro-particle Physics (HECA)" Seminar

2020/2021 | 2021/2022 | 2022/2023 | 2023/2024 | Seminar homepage

room B2.38, Pasteura 5 at 11:15

Marco Hufnagel (ULB, Brussels)

Pandemics and Cannibals: Some intriguing ways of producing dark matter in the early Universe

In the first part of the talk, we propose a novel mechanism to generate sterile neutrinos νs in the early Universe, by converting ordinary neutrinos να in scattering processes νs να → νs νs. After initial production by oscillations, this leads to an exponential growth in the νs abundance. We show that such a production regime naturally occurs for self-interacting νs, and that this opens up significant new parameter space where νs make up all of the observed dark matter. Our results provide strong motivation to further push the sensitivity of X-ray line searches, and to improve on constraints from structure formation. In the second part of the talk, we consider a scenario, in which the dark matter is alone in a hidden sector and consists of a real scalar particle in its spontaneously broken phase at a temperature which differs from the one of the visible sector, T' ≠ T. This is a particular case of a cannibal dark matter scenario, in which the relic abundance is sensitive to 3 → 2 and 4 → 2 processes. We study numerically and analytically the dark matter abundance both in the broken and the symmetric phases, while also reporting our results in the domain of thermal dark matter candidates.

room B2.38, Pasteura 5 at 11:15

Rafael Robson Lino dos Santos (CP3-Origins, University of Southern Denmark)

Probing new physics and gravity across scales

Evidence for ultraviolet gravitational fixed points in asymptotic safety quantum gravity has been found over the past years. The non-trivial interplay of matter and gravity can either spoil fixed points or enhance predictive power in infrared scales. In the first part of the talk, I will summarize the status of the field and explore the “asymptotic safety landscape” by considering dark-universe-motivated models in the matter sectors. Besides, the field of gravitational waves has flourished over the past decade. The search for a gravitational wave background across different energy scales is a tantalizing probe of new physics as it is complementary to CMB. In the second part of the talk, I will summarize the status of searches and show that nHz PTA data are already competitive to constrain BSM and cosmology particle physics models.

room B2.38, Pasteura 5 at 11:15

Manuel Reichert (University of Sussex)

Asymptotically safe quantum gravity

Over the past decades, the asymptotic safety scenario has matured into a viable contender for a consistent theory of quantum gravity. The scenario is based on a non-perturbative quantisation via an interacting UV fixed point of the renormalisation group flow. The existence of the UV fixed point has been confirmed in increasingly elaborate truncations. These results open the door to working out observable consequences of the theory, for example, graviton-mediated scattering, black hole solutions, and constraints on low-energy matter couplings. I will give a detailed introduction to the topic and present some recent advances in the field, in particular, in the area of computations on a Lorentzian background and the connection to (beyond) Standard Model physics.

room B2.38, Pasteura 5 at 11:15

Richard Ruiz (Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kraków)

Life at a Multi-TeV Muon Collider

In this talk we present a picture of what life is like at a multi-TeV muon collider. We start by showing that beyond a few TeV electroweak (EW) boson fusion/scattering becomes the dominant production vehicle at lepton colliders for both the Standard Model and new physics. Motivated by this, we revisit the treatment of weak gauge bosons as constituents of high-energy leptons. In particular, using a new, public implementation of (polarized) W/Z parton distribution functions in the Monte Carlo event generator MadGraph5_aMC@NLO, we report the size of universal, i.e., process independent, corrections that spoil the accuracy of a (factorized) scattering formula for muon colliders. Guided by this insight, we give an outlook for polarized EW boson scattering at many TeVs.

room B2.38, Pasteura 5 at 11:15

Anders Eller Thomsen (University of Bern)

New Developments in EFT Matching for BSM Physics

Attention: on-site meeting

With the absence of new resonance discoveries at the LHC, the role of Effective Field Theories (EFTs) in Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics has become increasingly crucial. EFTs serve as indispensable tools in precision physics, offering the greatest potential to reveal indirect evidence of new phenomena. This talk will showcase cutting-edge methods for matching BSM models to EFTs and their integration into an automated matching tool, Matchete. Additionally, the treatment of evanescent operators within the matching procedure will be discussed. These advancements contribute to a more comprehensive exploration of BSM physics through the application of EFTs.

room B2.38, Pasteura 5 at 11:15

Anish Ghoshal (University of Warsaw)

Complementary probes of weakly-coupled and high-scale BSM: Gravitational Waves versus Laboratory tests for Dark Matter and Leptogenesis

Attention: in-person meeting

Leptogenesis usually involves high scales and it is hard to test in laboratories, Here we will discuss probing high scale and intermediate scale leptogenesis via primordial sources of Gravitational Waves from inflationary tensor perturbations, thermal phase transitions and domain walls. First we will show leptogenesis in the B−L symmetry breaking scenario associated with a strong first-order phase transition that gives rise to detectable gravitational waves (GWs) via bubble collision. And the possible future GW experiments can effectively probe leptogenesis over a wide range of the B−L symmetry-breaking scale. Second we propose a novel way of probing high-scale Dirac leptogenesis, a viable alternative to the canonical leptogenesis scenario where the total lepton number is conserved, keeping light standard model neutrinos purely Dirac. This leads to GW signals from collapsing domain walls. We find that most of the near-future GW observatories will be able to probe Dirac leptogenesis scales all the way up to 10ˆ11 GeV. Third we will show how inflationary tensor perturbations and its detectability may shed light upon high-scale leptogenesis and dark matter. Last we will show complementary tests for freeze-in DM via GW and long-lived particle searches. In particular, we show that freeze-in scenarios can be searched by various experiments such as DUNE, FASER, FASER-II, MATHUSLA, SHiP, etc. complementary observables for GW detectors such as LISA and u-DECIGO.

Based on papers:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.01670
https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05672
https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.07032
https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10433

join us at 11:15

Tobias Binder (TU Munich)

NLO electric field correlators for the Dark Matter relic abundance

WIMPs at the TeV mass scale and above experience long-range force effects, which are known to play a crucial role for predicting the relic abundance precisely. One such effect is the existence of bound states in the spectrum. In the early Universe, they can form and subsequently decay through annihilation, leading to a further depletion of the total abundance. We review electroweakly charged dark matter and colored coannihilation scenarios as examples. To compute the formation of bound states at NLO (zero and finite temperature) in such scenarios, it turns out that the effort can be reduced to the evaluation of electric field correlators thanks to factorization. Our results for U(1) and SU(N) electric field correlators are presented, showing collinear finiteness and gauge invariance at NLO. Potential implications of enhanced bound-state formation rates due to the NLO effects are discussed.

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548

join us at 11:15

Ranjan Laha (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore)

Detecting low-mass primordial black holes as the dark matter candidate

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are one of the oldest and well-motivated dark matter candidates. PBHs can have a wide range in masses and their detection techniques vary (depending on their masses). I will be concentrating on the low-mass end of PBH masses (masses ~ 10^16 g to 10^18 g). I will discuss how one can detect the Hawking radiation from these objects. I will discuss the current constraints using various astrophysical observables like low-energy Galactic positrons, gamma-rays, and other observables. I will also discuss how near-future gamma-ray telescopes can discover low-mass PBH dark matter.

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548

join us at 11:15

Masayuki Wada (AstroCeNT, Warsaw)

Liquid Argon Technology for Dark Matter Search and Medical Application

Within the dark matter community, there is increasing interest in developing novel detector technologies with sensitivity to a wide range of dark matter (DM) candidates, complementing the many planned large-exposure searches for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).The results from the DarkSide-50 detector, a dual-phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr TPC) located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Italy, demonstrated the ability to extend the reach of a LAr TPC to WIMPs with masses below 10 GeV/c2 that scatter on nuclei (low-mass WIMPs), and to DM particles that scatter on electrons with masses down to 20 MeV/c2 (electron-scattering DM).I will present new results from DarkSide-50 for low-mass DM and current ongoing effort for a tonne-scale LAr TPC, DarkSide-LowMass experiment, as well as low energy nuclear recoil calibration experiment. I will also present our effort to apply the LAr technology to a medical scanner with Positron Emission Tomography (PET).

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548

join us at 11:15

Kodai Sakurai (University of Warsaw)

ALP DM and Higgs bosons in a new renormalizable model for light dark sector

Axion like particle (ALP) is one of the promising candidates of dark matter (DM). It can emerge from the dark sector with global U(1) symmetry. It is often assumed that the dark sector has CP symmetry. On the other hand, however, CP is already violated in the SM by the QCD theta term and quark mixing. The dark sector with CP violation is also an interesting possibility. In this talk, we propose a new renormalizable model for ALP with CP violation in the dark sector. We discuss the properties of the predicted ALP and how the ALP can be probed at ILC. In addition, we discuss quantum effect that affects a system with multi-Higgs states. It is shown that the mixing between two Higgs bosons is highly suppressed by the quantum effect in the regime where the decay rate for the extra Higgs boson is larger than the mass difference between two Higgs bosons.

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548

join us at 11:15

Chunshan Lin (Institute of Theoretical Physics, Jagiellonian University)

Sound Speed Resonance: A Novel Mechanism of Matter-Graviton Conversation

The matter-to-graviton conversion and the graviton-to-matter conversion can be realized by the oscillatory sound speed of the graviton and the matter fields respectively. This mechanism is in fact quite general. It can occur in a large class of theories, including the Einstein gravity minimally coupled with the standard model in particle physics, the Horndeski theory, and the theories beyond Horndeski.

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548

join us at 11:15

Shoaib Munir (ICTP-EAIF, University of Rwanda)

Hunting down minimally extended Higgs sectors

Additional Higgs bosons, besides the one that has properties consistent with the 125 GeV scalar discovered at the LHC in 2012, are highly motivated by cosmological observations in particular. Models of new physics therefore typically contain one of more of these, but despite dedicated searches, any new (pseudo)scalars have evaded detection at the LHC thus far. In this talk I will discuss some specific scenarios that are possible in minimal extensions of the Standard Model Higgs sector, but that may not be accessible with the existing general probes. I will make a case for certain non-standard approaches that might help uncover these elusive scenarios at the current and future runs of the LHC.

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548

join us at 11:15

Dimitrios Karamitros (University of Manchester)

Towards a Non-Local S-Matrix Theory

In this talk we will discuss a non-local formulation of the S-matrix. To better understand the significance of the emerging quantum phenomena, we consider a solvable field-theoretic model. Present and future experiments may benefit from such non-local S-matrix construction, as the transition amplitude depends on the distance between the production and detection vertices. This solvable model enables accurate descriptions of detection regions that are either close to or far from the source. In close analogy with light diffraction in classical optics, we call these two regions near-field and far-field zones, or the Fresnel and Fraunhofer regions. We revisit the question whether mixed mediators produce an oscillating pattern if their detection occurs in the Fresnel region. We observe several novel features with respect to its angular dependence which have not been accounted before in the literature. In particular, we obtain a ``quantum obliquity factor'' that suppresses particle propagation in the backwards direction, thereby providing an explicit quantum field-theoretic description for its origin in diffractive optics.

https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/9529812548