Person:

Randall, Lisa

We present a new mechanism for transferring a pre-existing lepton or baryon asymmetry to a dark matter asymmetry that relies on mass mixing which is dynamically induced in the early universe. Such mixing can succeed with only generic scales and operators and can give rise to distinctive relationships between the asymmetries in the two sectors. The mixing eliminates the need for the type of additional higher-dimensional operators that are inherent to many current asymmetric dark matter models. We consider several implementations of this idea. In one model, mass mixing is temporarily induced during a two-stage electroweak phase transition in a two Higgs doublet model. In the other class of models, mass mixing is induced by large field vacuum expectation values at high temperatures — either moduli fields or even more generic kinetic terms. Mass mixing models of this type can readily accommodate asymmetric dark matter masses ranging from 1 GeV to 100 TeV and expand the scope of possible relationships between the dark and visible sectors in such models.

We propose a model of spontaneous CP violation to address the strong CP problem in warped extra dimensions that relies on sequestering flavor and CP violation. We assume that brane-localized Higgs Yukawa interactions respect a (U(3)) flavor symmetry that is broken only by bulk fermion mass and Yukawa terms. All CP violation arises from the vev of a CP-odd scalar field localized in the bulk. To suppress radiative corrections to (\bar{\theta}), the doublet quarks in this model are localized on the IR brane. We calculate constraints from flavor-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), precision electroweak measurements, CKM unitarity, and the electric dipole moments in this model and predict (\bar{\theta}) to be at least about (10^{−12}).

A variant of a warped extra dimension model is presented. It is based on 5D minimal flavor violation, in which the only sources of flavor breaking are two 5D anarchic Yukawa matrices. These matrices also control the bulk masses, which are responsible for the resulting flavor hierarchy. The theory flows to a next to minimal flavor violation model where flavor violation is dominantly coming from the 3rd generation. Flavor violation is also suppressed by a parameter that dials the violation in the up or down sector. There is therefore a sharp limit in which there is no flavor violation in the down-type quark sector which, remarkably, is consistent with the observed flavor parameters. This is used to eliminate the current Randall-Sundrum flavor and CP problem. Our construction suggests that strong dynamic-based, flavor models may be built based on the same concepts.

Low energy cosmic ray antideuterons provide a unique low background channel for indirect detection of dark matter. We compute the cosmic ray flux of antideuterons from hadronic annihilations of dark matter for various Standard Model final states and determine the mass reach of two future experiments (AMS-02 and GAPS) designed to greatly increase the sensitivity of antideuteron detection over current bounds. We consider generic models of scalar, fermion, and massive vector bosons as thermal dark matter, describe their basic features relevant to direct and indirect detection, and discuss the implications of direct detection bounds on models of dark matter as a thermal relic. We also consider specific dark matter candidates and assess their potential for detection via antideuterons from their hadronic annihilation channels. Since the dark matter mass reach of the GAPS experiment can be well above 100 GeV, we find that antideuterons can be a good indirect detection channel for a variety of thermal relic electroweak scale dark matter candidates, even when the rate for direct detection is highly suppressed.

We present a new paradigm for dark matter in which a dark matter asymmetry is established in the early universe that is then transferred to ordinary matter. We show this scenario can fit naturally into weak scale physics models, with a dark matter candidate mass of this order. We present several natural suppression mechanisms, including bleeding dark matter number density into lepton number, which occurs naturally in models with lepton-violating operators transferring the asymmetry.

We present several strategies for searching for supersymmetry in dijet channels that do not explicitly invoke missing energy. Preliminary investigations suggest that signal-to-background ratios of at least 4--5 should be achievable at the LHC, with discovery possible for squarks as heavy as - 1.7 TeV.

Because the TeV-scale to be probed at the Large Hadron Collider should shed light on the naturalness, hierarchy, and dark matter problems, most searches to date have focused on new physics signatures motivated by possible solutions to these puzzles. In this paper, we consider some candidates for new states that although not well-motivated from this standpoint are obvious possibilities that current search strategies would miss. In particular we consider vector representations of fermions in multiplets of (SU)(2)(_{L}) with a lightest neutral state. Standard search strategies would fail to find such particles because of the expected small one-loop-level splitting between charged and neutral states.

We argue that the highly studied black hole signatures based on thermal multiparticle final states are very unlikely and only occur in a very limited parameter regime if at all. However, we show that if the higher-dimensional quantum gravity scale is low, it should be possible to study quantum gravity in the context of higher dimensions through detailed compositeness-type searches.

Resonance searches generally focus on narrow states that would produce a sharp peak rising over background. Early LHC running will, however, be sensitive primarily to broad resonances. In this paper we demonstrate that statistical methods should suffice to find broad resonances and distinguish them from both background and contact interactions over a large range of previously unexplored parameter space. We furthermore introduce an angular measure we call ellipticity, which measures how forward (or backward) the muon is in eta, and allows for discrimination between models with different parity violation early in the LHC running. We contrast this with existing angular observables and demonstrate that ellipticity is superior for discrimination based on parity violation, while others are better at spin determination.

It is well known that stable weak scale particles are viable dark matter candidates since the annihilation cross section is naturally about the right magnitude to leave the correct thermal residual abundance. Many dark matter searches have focused on relatively light dark matter consistent with weak couplings to the Standard Model. However, in a strongly coupled theory, or even if the coupling is just a few times bigger than the Standard Model couplings, dark matter can have TeV-scale mass with the correct thermal relic abundance. Here we consider neutral TeV-mass scalar dark matter, its necessary interactions, and potential signals. We consider signals both with and without higher-dimension operators generated by strong coupling at the TeV scale, as might happen for example in an RS scenario. We find some potential for detection in high energy photons that depends on the dark matter distribution. Detection in positrons at lower energies, such as those PAMELA probes, would be difficult though a higher energy positron signal could in principle be detectable over background. However, a light dark matter particle with higher-dimensional interactions consistent with a TeV cutoff can in principle match PAMELA data.