Title: On the construction of theories of composite dark matter
Speaker: Seán Mee (Graz Univ.)
Abstract:
The dark matter remains one of the most famous unanswered questions in physics today. Despite the popular weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) paradigm, a new class of theories posits that dark matter could be described as the lightest bound state in a QCD-like confining hidden sector.
We discuss the construction of theories which describe the interactions of these states with other interesting bound states of the hidden sector, with a particular focus on pseudoreal symmetry group Sp(4). We highlight the key differences between such theories and the more familiar SM QCD. We present some results for the low-energy quantities describing the spectrum of these composite theories (masses and decay constants). Finally, we discuss the simplest portals which could allow us to look for such sectors at colliders and elsewhere, the associated symmetry breaking patterns and the potential phenomenological consequences.