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Title:
Lighting a New Lamppost in Dark Matter with Fixed-target Experiments
Speaker:
Abstract:
The viable mass range for the unknown constituents of dark matter (DM) is enormous, but specific scenarios for the origins of DM have created lampposts in the search, sharpening the focus on a few narrower ranges in mass. One natural scenario, where DM originates from thermal contact with familiar matter in the early universe, requires the DM mass to lie between about an MeV to 100 TeV. Searches for WIMPs have focused considerable attention on the upper end of this mass range (~GeV — ~TeV), while the ~MeV — ~GeV region remains largely unexplored. Since most of the stable constituents of known matter have masses in this lower range and tantalizing hints for physics beyond the Standard Model have been found here, the exploration of this region is now a high priority. A thermal origin for DM necessitates only an interaction between DM and ordinary matter that guarantees a production mechanism for DM at accelerators, and fixed-target accelerator-based experiments have a unique ability to search broadly in this mass range, both for the DM and for new interactions between DM and ordinary matter implied by thermal origins. The status and plans of these searches will be discussed, with a focus on the activities of the SLAC Dark Sectors group, including the APEX and HPS experiments at JLab and the future LDMX experiment at SLAC.
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