Constraints on axion-like dark matter from a SERF comagnetometer

Ultralight axion-like particles are well-motivated relics that might compose the cosmological dark matter and source anomalous time-dependent magnetic fields. We report on terrestrial bounds from the Noble And Alkali Spin Detectors for Ultralight Coherent darK matter (NASDUCK) collaboration on the coupling of axion-like particles to neutrons and protons. The detector uses nuclei of noble-gas and alkali-metal atoms and operates in the Spin-Exchange Relaxation-Free (SERF) regime, achieving high sensitivity to axion-like dark matter fields. Conducting a month-long search, we cover the mass range of 1.4 × 10-12 eV/c2 to 2 × 10-10 eV/c2 and provide limits which supersede robust astrophysical bounds, and improve upon previous terrestrial constraints by over two orders of magnitude for many masses within this range for protons, and up to two orders of magnitude for neutrons. These are the sole reliable terrestrial bounds reported on the coupling of protons with axion-like dark matter, covering an unexplored terrain in its parameter space.

Roadmap to Thermal Dark Matter beyond the Weakly Interacting Dark Matter Unitarity Bound

We study the general properties of the freeze-out of a thermal relic. We give analytic estimates of the relic abundance for an arbitrary freeze-out process, showing when instantaneous freeze-out is appropriate and how it can be corrected when freeze-out is slow. This is used to generalize the relationship between the dark matter mass and coupling that matches the observed abundance. The result encompasses well-studied particular examples, such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), strongly interacting massive particles, coannihilation, coscattering, inverse decays, and forbidden channels, and generalizes beyond them. In turn, this gives an approximate perturbative unitarity bound on the dark matter mass for an arbitrary thermal freeze-out process. We show that going beyond the maximal masses allowed for freeze-out via dark matter self-annihilations [WIMP-like, m_{DM}≫O(100  TeV)] predicts that there are nearly degenerate states with the dark matter and that the dark matter is generically metastable.

Thermal Dark Matter from Freeze-Out of Inverse Decays

We propose a new thermal dark matter candidate whose abundance is determined by the freeze-out of inverse decays. The relic abundance depends parametrically only on a decay width, while matching the observed value requires that the coupling determining the width-and the width itself-should be exponentially small. The dark matter is therefore very weakly coupled to the standard model, evading conventional searches. This inverse decay dark matter can be discovered by searching for the long-lived particle that decays into the dark matter at future planned experiments.

Impact of Dark Compton Scattering on Direct Dark Matter Absorption Searches

Direct detection experiments are gaining in mass reach. Here we show that the inclusion of dark Compton scattering, which has typically been neglected in absorption searches, has a substantial impact on the reach and discovery potential of direct detection experiments at high bosonic cold dark matter masses. We demonstrate this for relic dark photons and axionlike particles: we improve expected reach across materials, and further use results from SuperCDMS, EDELWEISS, and GERDA to place enhanced limits on dark matter parameter space. We outline the implications for detector design and analysis.

Accidentally Asymmetric Dark Matter

We study the effect of a first-order phase transition in a confining SU(N) dark sector with heavy dark quarks. The baryons of this sector are the dark matter candidates. During the confinement phase transition the heavy quarks are trapped inside isolated, contracting pockets of the deconfined phase, giving rise to a second stage of annihilation that dramatically suppresses the dark quark abundance. The surviving abundance is determined by the local accidental asymmetry in each pocket. The correct dark matter abundance is obtained for O(1-100)  PeV dark quarks, above the usual unitarity bound.

Heavy Thermal Dark Matter from a New Collision Mechanism

We propose a new thermal freeze-out mechanism that results in dark matter masses exceeding the unitarity bound by many orders of magnitude, without violating perturbative unitarity or modifying the standard cosmology. The process determining the relic abundance is χζ^{†}→ζζ, where χ is the dark matter candidate. For m_{ζ}<m_{χ}<3m_{ζ}, χ is cosmologically long-lived and scatters against the exponentially more abundant ζ. Therefore, such a process allows for exponentially heavier dark matter for the same interaction strength as a particle undergoing ordinary 2→2 freeze-out, or equivalently, exponentially weaker interactions for the same mass. We demonstrate this mechanism in a leptophilic dark matter model, which allows for dark matter masses up to 10^{9}  GeV.

Superheavy Thermal Dark Matter

We propose a mechanism of elementary thermal dark matter with a mass up to 10^{14}  GeV, within a standard cosmological history, whose relic abundance is determined solely by its interactions with the standard model, without violating the perturbative unitarity bound. The dark matter consists of many nearly degenerate particles which scatter with the standard model bath in a nearest-neighbor chain, and maintain chemical equilibrium with the standard model bath by in-equilibrium decays and inverse decays. The phenomenology includes super heavy elementary dark matter and heavy relics that decay at various epochs in the cosmological history, with implications for the cosmic microwave background, structure formation, and cosmic ray experiments.

Long-lived particles at the energy frontier: the MATHUSLA physics case

We examine the theoretical motivations for long-lived particle (LLP) signals at the LHC in a comprehensive survey of standard model (SM) extensions. LLPs are a common prediction of a wide range of theories that address unsolved fundamental mysteries such as naturalness, dark matter, baryogenesis and neutrino masses, and represent a natural and generic possibility for physics beyond the SM (BSM). In most cases the LLP lifetime can be treated as a free parameter from the [Formula: see text]m scale up to the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis limit of [Formula: see text] m. Neutral LLPs with lifetimes above [Formula: see text]100 m are particularly difficult to probe, as the sensitivity of the LHC main detectors is limited by challenging backgrounds, triggers, and small acceptances. MATHUSLA is a proposal for a minimally instrumented, large-volume surface detector near ATLAS or CMS. It would search for neutral LLPs produced in HL-LHC collisions by reconstructing displaced vertices (DVs) in a low-background environment, extending the sensitivity of the main detectors by orders of magnitude in the long-lifetime regime. We study the LLP physics opportunities afforded by a MATHUSLA-like detector at the HL-LHC, assuming backgrounds can be rejected as expected. We develop a model-independent approach to describe the sensitivity of MATHUSLA to BSM LLP signals, and compare it to DV and missing energy searches at ATLAS or CMS. We then explore the BSM motivations for LLPs in considerable detail, presenting a large number of new sensitivity studies. While our discussion is especially oriented towards the long-lifetime regime at MATHUSLA, this survey underlines the importance of a varied LLP search program at the LHC in general. By synthesizing these results into a general discussion of the top-down and bottom-up motivations for LLP searches, it is our aim to demonstrate the exceptional strength and breadth of the physics case for the construction of the MATHUSLA detector.

Inflating to the Weak Scale

We present a new solution to the hierarchy problem, where the Higgs boson mass is at its observed electroweak value because such a patch inflates the most in the early Universe. If the Higgs boson mass depends on a field undergoing quantum fluctuations during inflation, then inflation will fill the Universe with the Higgs boson mass that corresponds to the largest vacuum energy. The hierarchy problem is solved if the maximum vacuum energy occurs for the observed Higgs boson mass. We demonstrate this notion with a proof-of-principle model containing an axion, a modulus field and the Higgs boson, and show that inflation can be responsible for the weak scale.

Codecaying Dark Matter

We propose a new mechanism for thermal dark matter freeze-out, called codecaying dark matter. Multicomponent dark sectors with degenerate particles and out-of-equilibrium decays can codecay to obtain the observed relic density. The dark matter density is exponentially depleted through the decay of nearly degenerate particles rather than from Boltzmann suppression. The relic abundance is set by the dark matter annihilation cross section, which is predicted to be boosted, and the decay rate of the dark sector particles. The mechanism is viable in a broad range of dark matter parameter space, with a robust prediction of an enhanced indirect detection signal. Finally, we present a simple model that realizes codecaying dark matter.

Elastically Decoupling Dark Matter

We present a novel dark matter candidate, an elastically decoupling relic, which is a cold thermal relic whose present abundance is determined by the cross section of its elastic scattering on standard model particles. The dark matter candidate is predicted to have a mass ranging from a few to a few hundred MeV, and an elastic scattering cross section with electrons, photons and/or neutrinos in the 10^{-3}-1  fb range.

Mechanism for thermal relic dark matter of strongly interacting massive particles

We present a new paradigm for achieving thermal relic dark matter. The mechanism arises when a nearly secluded dark sector is thermalized with the standard model after reheating. The freeze-out process is a number-changing 3→2 annihilation of strongly interacting massive particles (SIMPs) in the dark sector, and points to sub-GeV dark matter. The couplings to the visible sector, necessary for maintaining thermal equilibrium with the standard model, imply measurable signals that will allow coverage of a significant part of the parameter space with future indirect- and direct-detection experiments and via direct production of dark matter at colliders. Moreover, 3→2 annihilations typically predict sizable 2→2 self-interactions which naturally address the "core versus cusp" and "too-big-to-fail" small-scale structure formation problems.

Dynamical R-parity violation

We present a new paradigm for supersymmetric theories with R-parity violation (RPV). At high scale, R parity is conserved in the visible sector but spontaneously broken in the supersymmetry-breaking sector. The breaking is then dynamically mediated to the visible sector and is manifested via nonrenormalizable operators at low energy. Consequently, RPV operators originate from the Kähler potential rather than the superpotential, and are naturally suppressed by the supersymmetry-breaking scale, explaining their small magnitudes. A new set of nonholomorphic RPV operators is identified and found to often dominate over the standard RPV ones. We study the relevant low-energy constraints arising from baryon-number violating processes, proton decay, and flavor changing neutral currents, which may all be satisfied if a solution to the standard model flavor puzzle is incorporated. The chiral structure of the RPV operators implies new and distinct collider signatures, indicating the need to alter current techniques in searching for RPV at the LHC.

Implications of Higgs searches on the four-generation standard model

Within the four-generation standard model, the Higgs couplings to gluons and to photons deviate in a significant way from the predictions of the three-generation standard model. As a consequence, large departures in several Higgs production and decay channels are expected. Recent Higgs search results, presented by ATLAS, CMS, and CDF, hint on the existence of a Higgs boson with a mass around 125 GeV. Using these results and assuming such a Higgs boson, we derive exclusion limits on the four-generation standard model. For m(H)=125 GeV, the model is excluded above 99.95% confidence level. For 124.5 GeV≤m(H)≤127.5 GeV, an exclusion limit above 99% confidence level is found.