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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Hadronic mono- W ' probes of dark matter at colliders

Particle collisions at the energy frontier can probe the nature of invisible dark matter via production in association with recoiling visible objects. We propose a new potential production mode, in which dark matter is produced by the decay of a heavy dark Higgs boson radiated from a heavy W' boson. In such a model, motivated by left-right symmetric theories, dark matter would not be pair produced in association with other recoiling objects due to its lack of direct coupling to quarks or gluons. We study the hadronic decay mode via W' → tb and estimate the LHC exclusion sensitivity at 95% confidence level to be 10 2 - 10 5 fb for W' boson masses between 250 and 1750 GeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Discovering Electroweak Interacting Dark Matter at Muon Colliders Using Soft Tracks

Minimal dark matter models feature one neutral particle that serves as a thermal relic dark matter candidate, as well as quasidegenerate charged states with TeV masses. When the charged states are produced at colliders, they can decay into dark matter and a low-momentum (soft) charged particle, which is challenging to reconstruct at hadron colliders. We demonstrate that a 3 TeV muon collider is capable of detecting these soft tracks, enabling the discovery of thermal Higgsinos and similar dark matter candidates that constitute highly motivated scenarios for future collider searches. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Capdevilla, Rodolfo (ORCID:0000000201227704)↗
DOE OSTI2025

Discovering Electroweak Interacting Dark Matter at Muon Colliders Using Soft Tracks

Minimal dark matter models feature one neutral particle that serves as a thermal relic dark matter candidate, as well as quasidegenerate charged states with TeV masses. When the charged states are produced at colliders, they can decay into dark matter and a low-momentum (soft) charged particle, which is challenging to reconstruct at hadron colliders. We demonstrate that a 3 TeV muon collider is capable of detecting these soft tracks, enabling the discovery of thermal Higgsinos and similar dark matter candidates that constitute highly motivated scenarios for future collider searches.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Concept of Very-Asymmetric lepton Collider for dark matter search

Accelerator-based searches for dark matter are aiming for high sensitivity and need an experimental setup with high luminosity. This field of research is often called intensity frontier physics. One of the best motivated portals of interaction between dark matter and ordinary matter is a dark photon which could be observed as a resonance in the invariant mass of the decay products. Electron–positron collisions are known to be the cleanest interaction for such a study. In this paper we propose a scheme for a collider which allows for a luminosity of a few orders of magnitude higher than could be obtained in a conventional symmetric collider and with a few times higher accessible mass than is possible using a positron beam and a fixed target approach. The key concept is based on asymmetric energies: a high-energy circulating positron beam and a low-energy high-intensity electron beam, and optimization of the beam interaction region. We present here a configuration of a collision region of 10 MeV electron and 4 GeV positron beams.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Interplay of freeze-in and freeze-out: Lepton-flavored dark matter and muon colliders

We study a lepton-flavored dark matter model and its signatures at a future muon collider. We focus on the less-explored regime of feeble dark matter interactions, which suppresses the dangerous lepton-flavor-violating processes, gives rise to dark matter freeze-in production, and leads to long-lived particle signatures at colliders. We find that the interplay of dark matter freeze-in and its mediator freeze-out gives rise to an upper bound of around TeV scales on the dark matter mass. The signatures of this model depend on the lifetime of the mediator and can range from generic prompt decays to more exotic long-lived particle signals. In the prompt region, we calculate the signal yield, study useful kinematics cuts, and report tolerable systematics that would allow for a 5 σ discovery. In the long-lived region, we calculate the number of charged tracks and displaced lepton signals of our model in different parts of the detector and uncover kinematic features that can be used for background rejection. We show that, unlike in hadron colliders, multiple production channels contribute significantly, which leads to sharply distinct kinematics for electroweakly charged long-lived particle signals. Ultimately, the collider signatures of this lepton-flavored dark matter model are common among models of electroweak-charged new physics, rendering this model a useful and broadly applicable benchmark model for future muon collider studies that can help inform work on detector design and studies of systematics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hitting the Thermal Target for Leptophilic Dark Matter at Future Lepton Colliders

We study future lepton collider prospects for testing predictive models of leptophilic dark matter (DM) candidates with a thermal origin. We calculate experimental milestones for testing the parameter space compatible with freeze-out and the associated collider signals at past, present, and future facilities. This analysis places new limits on such models by leveraging the utility of lepton colliders. At 𝑒+⁢𝑒− machines, we make projections using precision 𝑍 -pole observables from 𝑒+⁢𝑒−→ℓ+⁢ℓ−+𝐸 signatures at large electron-positron collider and future projections for future circular collider (ee) in these channels. Additionally, a muon collider could also probe new thermal relic parameter space in this scenario via 𝜇+⁢𝜇−→𝑋+𝐸 , where 𝑋 is any easily identifiable standard model object. Collectively, these processes can probe much of the parameter space for which DM direct annihilation to ℓ+⁢ℓ− yields the observed relic density in Higgs-like models with mass-proportional couplings to charged leptons.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Searching for the Nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy

DE-SC0019474 supported a multi-pronged approach to understanding dark matter and dark energy. This included probes of dark matter at collider experiments, neutrino detectors, direct detection experiments, and N-body simulations of dark matter halos. This work helps guide our understanding of dark matter, particles associated with a dark matter sector, and how to use current and future experiments to search for direct evidence of dark matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Neutrino-portal dark matter detection prospects at a future muon collider

With no concrete evidence for nongravitational interactions of dark matter to date, it is natural to wonder whether dark matter couples predominantly to the Standard Model (SM)’s neutrinos. Neutrino interactions (and the possible existence of additional neutrinophilic mediators) are substantially less understood than those of other SM particles, yet this picture will change dramatically in the coming decades with new neutrino sources. One potential new source arises with the construction of a high-energy muon collider (MuCol); due to muons’ instability, a MuCol is a source of high-energy collimated neutrinos. Importantly, since the physics of muon decays (into neutrinos) is very well-understood, this leads to a neutrino flux with systematic uncertainties far smaller than fluxes from conventional high-energy (proton-sourced) neutrino beams. In this work, we study the capabilities of a potential neutrino detector, “ MuCol ν ”, placed ∼ 100 m downstream of the MuCol interaction point. The MuCol ν detector would be especially capable of searching for a neutrinophilic mediator ϕ through the mononeutrino scattering process ν μ N → μ + ϕ X , exceeding searches from other terrestrial approaches for m ϕ in the ∼ few MeV- ten GeV range. Even with a 10 kg-yr exposure, MuCol ν is capable of searching for well-motivated classes of thermal freeze-out and freeze-in neutrino-portal dark matter. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Adhikary, Jyotismita (ORCID:0000000253894170)↗
DOE OSTI2022

Report of the Topical Group on Physics Beyond the Standard Model at Energy Frontier for Snowmass 2021

This is the Snowmass2021 Energy Frontier (EF) Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) report. It combines the EF topical group reports of EF08 (Model-specific explorations), EF09 (More general explorations), and EF10 (Dark Matter at Colliders). The report includes a general introduction to BSM motivations and the comparative prospects for proposed future experiments for a broad range of potential BSM models and signatures, including compositeness, SUSY, leptoquarks, more general new bosons and fermions, long-lived particles, dark matter, charged-lepton flavor violation, and anomaly detection.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Ultraviolet running constraints on low mass dark sectors

We analyze the UV breakdown of Sub-GeV dark matter models that live in a new, dark U(1) sector. Many of these models include a scalar field, which is either the dark matter itself or a dark Higgs field that generates mass terms for the dark matter particle via spontaneous symmetry breaking. A quartic self coupling of this scalar field is generically allowed, and we show that its running is largely governed by the strength of the U(1) gauge field, α D . Furthermore, it consistently has a lower Landau pole than the gauge coupling. Link fields, which couple to both the dark sector and the Standard Model (SM), connect these Landau poles to constraints on SM charged particles. Current LHC constraints on link fields are compatible with α D ≲ 0.5 - 1 for most of the mass range in most models, while smaller values, α D ≲ 0.15, are favored for Majorana DM.

new light particles↗
DOE OSTI2025

Dark showers from sneaky dark matter

We present a minimal composite dark matter model, based on a SU(Nd) dark sector with nf dark quarks and a heavy t-channel mediator. For nf ≥ 4, the dark flavor symmetry guarantees the stability of a subset of the dark pions, which serve as our dark matter candidates. Their relic abundance is determined by dark sector annihilation with the remaining dark pions, which are unstable and decay. Due to their degenerate masses, the annihilation cross section is suppressed at low temperatures, thereby avoiding stringent constraints from indirect detection and opening up the GeV mass window. The decaying dark pions are naturally long lived. We obtain limits on the model from semi-visible or emerging jet searches and estimate the reach of future probes.

ALPs↗
DOE OSTI2024

Probing earth-bound dark matter with nuclear reactors

Strongly-interacting dark matter can be accumulated in large quantities inside the Earth, and for dark matter particles in a few GeV mass range, it can exist in large quantities near the Earth’s surface. We investigate the constraints imposed on such dark matter properties by its upscattering by fast neutrons in nuclear reactors with subsequent scattering in nearby well-shielded dark matter detectors, schemes which are already used for searches of the coherent reactor neutrino scattering. We find that the existing experiments cover new parameter space on the spin-dependent interaction between dark matter and the nucleon. Similar experiments performed with research reactors, and lesser amount of shielding, may provide additional sensitivity to strongly-interacting dark matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Lighting up the LHC with Dark Matter

We show that simultaneously explaining dark matter and the observed value of the muon’s magnetic dipole moment may lead to yet unexplored photon signals at the LHC. We consider the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with electroweakino masses in the few-to-several hundred GeV range, and opposite sign of the Bino mass parameter with respect to both the Higgsino and Wino mass parameters. In such region of parameter space, the spin-independent elastic scattering cross section of a Bino-like dark matter candidate in direct detection experiment is suppressed by cancellations between different amplitudes, and the observed dark matter relic density can be realized via Bino-Wino co-annihilation. Moreover, the observed value of the muon’s magnetic dipole moment can be explained by Bino and Wino loop contributions. Interestingly, “radiative” decays of Wino-like neutralinos into the lightest neutralino and a photon are enhanced, whereas decays into leptons are suppressed. While these decay patterns weaken the reach of multi-lepton searches at the LHC, the radiative decay opens a new window for probing dark matter at the LHC through the exploration of parameter space regions beyond those currently accessible. To complement the current electroweakino searches, we propose searching for a single (soft) photon plus missing transverse energy, accompanied by a hard initial state radiation jet.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Search for Fractionally Charged Particles in Proton-Proton Collisions at $\sqrt{𝑠}$ = 13 TeV

A search is presented for fractionally charged particles with charges below 1⁢𝑒, using their small energy loss in the tracking detector as a key variable to observe a signal. The analyzed dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb −1 of proton-proton collisions collected at $\sqrt{𝑠}$ = 13 TeV in 2016–2018 at the CERN LHC. This is the first search at the LHC for new particles with a charge between 𝑒/3 and 0.9⁢𝑒, including an extension of previous results at a charge of 2⁢𝑒/3. Masses up to 640 GeV and charges as low as 𝑒/3 are excluded at 95% confidence level. These are the most stringent limits to date for the considered Drell-Yan-like production mode.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Current status of the light neutralino thermal dark matter in the phenomenological MSSM

In a previous publication, we studied the parameter space of the phenomenological minimal Supersymmetric standard model with a light neutralino thermal dark matter ( M χ ˜ 1 0 ≤ M h / 2 ) and observed that the recent results from the dark matter and collider experiments put strong constraints on this scenario. In this work, we present in detail the arguments behind the robustness of this result against scanning over the large number of parameters in phenomenological minimal Supersymmetric standard model. The Run 3 of LHC will be crucial in probing the surviving regions of the parameter space. We further investigate the impact of light staus on our parameter space and also provide benchmarks that can be interesting for Run 3 of LHC. We analyze these benchmarks at the LHC using the machine learning framework of . Finally, we also discuss the effect of nonstandard cosmology on the parameter space. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Barman, Rahool Kumar↗
DOE OSTI2025

How to falsify string theory at a collider

The string landscape accommodates a broad range of possible effective field theories. This poses a challenge for extracting verifiable predictions as well as falsifiable signatures of string theory. Motivated by these considerations, in this work we observe that all known stringy standard models support only low-dimensional representations of the gauge group. While it is in principle possible to produce contrived models with higher-dimensional representations, these generically appear in a tower of states with lighter ones in lower-dimensional representations, i.e., not in isolation. With this in mind, we consider the phenomenologically well-motivated scenario given by adding a single Majorana field in a real, 𝑛-dimensional representation of 𝑆⁢𝑈⁢(2) 𝐿 with 𝑛≥5 and nothing else . This scenario is not realized in any known string construction, and we conjecture that this is true of string theory in general. Detection of this scenario would thus amount to falsifying the (known) string landscape. We recast existing LHC searches for new electroweak states to extract updated bounds on this class of scenarios. Improved limits from future colliders and dark matter detection experiments provide additional routes to potentially falsifying string theory.

extensions of fermion sector↗
DOE OSTI2023

Future accelerator projects: new physics at the energy frontier

High-energy colliders provide direct access to the energy frontier, allowing to search for new physics at scales as high as the machine’s center-of-mass energy, perform precision measurements of the Standard Model (SM) parameters, including those related to the flavor sector, and determine the Higgs boson properties and their connection to electroweak symmetry breaking. Each proposed future collider option has its own specific science goals and capabilities, depending on the designed running energy (energies) amongst other parameters. In this paper, an overview of the discovery potential of future circular and linear colliders is presented. Results from searches for beyond the Standard Model (BSM) phenomena at proton–proton, proton–electron, electron–positron, and muon–antimuon colliders are summarized.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗