Efforts for axion’s search have been reinforced in the past decades, motivated by its rich phenomenology allowing for various ways to probe its parameter. Axions provide a solution to the Strong CP puzzle while being a dark matter candidate. In a spirit of minimality, we attempt to have it solve additional puzzles. We are particularly interested in coupling the axion to the sector of...
Entanglement is solely a quantum property and it can be extremely helpful to test the physics beyond the Standard Model in tabletop experiments with the advent of future quantum technologies. In this work, we provide an entanglement-based partial positive transpose (PPT) witness for Yukawa-type potentials in the infrared regime between pairs of neutral/charged particles in a spatial quantum...
The MAgnetized Disk and Mirror Axion eXperiment (MADMAX) is a future experiment aiming to detect dark matter axions from the galactic halo by resonant conversion to photons in a strong magnetic field. It uses a novel concept based on a stack of dielectric disks in front of a mirror, called booster, to enhance the potential signal from axion-photon conversion over a significant mass range. In...
Haloscopes are sensitive detectors used for dark matter axion search in the microwave energy range. They rely on the axion to photon conversion in a static magnetic field, and its amplification by resonance with a cavity electromagnetic mode. While simple cylinder cavities working below below 1 GHz can provide large volume detectors of typically a hundred liters or more (GrAHal-CAPP), searches...
LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a direct detection dark matter experiment located at the Sanford underground research facility in Lead, South Dakota, USA. LZ utilizes a dual-phase time projection chamber containing 7 tonnes of active xenon surrounded by veto systems to search for signals induced by WIMP dark matter candidates. Recently, the experiment announced world-leading WIMP results achieved over 280...
The General Anti-Particle Spectrometer (GAPS) is a long duration balloon experiment scheduled for its first launch from Antarctica during the austral summer of 2025-26, with a total of three planned flights. GAPS is optimized to detect cosmic-ray antinuclei at energies below 0.25 GeV per nucleon, a yet-unexplored energy regime with characteristically low astrophysical backgrounds. The...
The search for dark matter (DM) remains one of the most pressing challenges in modern physics. Detecting sub-GeV DM particles poses significant challenges for traditional Earth-based detectors due to their low collision energies. This talk presents a novel approach to overcome these limitations: blazar-boosted dark matter (BBDM). I will explore how active galactic nuclei (AGN) with jets...
Fermionic asymmetric dark matter (ADM) can be captured in neutron stars (NS) via scatterings with the neutron star material. The absence of DM annihilations due to their asymmetric nature would thus lead to their accumulation in the NS core, which can exceed the Chandrasekhar limit to collapse into a black hole (BH), and provide exclusion limits from observations of neutron stars today. We...
The DarkSide-20k detector, currently under construction at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, consists of a 51 tonne dual-phase Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber aiming to directly detect GeV – TeV mass WIMPs. WIMPs are one of the most promising dark matter candidates, but no direct detection experiment has yet observed evidence sufficient to claim a WIMP discovery....
The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment is a dark matter direct detection experiment operating almost a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. LZ uses a 7 active-tonne dual-phase xenon time projection chamber primarily designed to detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a well-motivated class of dark matter candidate. This talk will give the...
The XENONnT detector, located at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, is a leading experiment in the search for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). It features a dual-phase time projection chamber with a 5.9-tonne liquid xenon active target, designed to detect rare particle interactions. Owing to its low background environment, the...
The PICO collaboration operates bubble chambers to search for WIMP dark matter, leveraging the excellent gamma rejection and long live fractions enabled by operating at a lower degree of superheat than the bubble chambers of the 1960s. This advancement allows for significantly improved background rejection while maintaining sensitivity to nuclear recoils. Located at the SNOLAB underground...
We present a method to investigate the properties of solitonic cores in the Thomas-Fermi regime under the self-interacting scalar field dark matter framework. Using semi-analytical techniques, we characterize soliton signatures through their density profiles, gravitational lensing deflection angles, and surface mass density excess in the context of strong lensing by galaxy clusters. Focusing...
A natural dark matter candidate in many theories of strongly-interacting dark sectors is the dark pion $\pi_D$, which is a composite particle that is expected to have a mass close to or below the GeV scale. In many cases, these theories also contain a light vector meson, $\rho_D$ , that can be produced together with dark pions through dark showers created in particle collisions. Cosmological...
Despite the success of the Standard Model (SM) there remains behaviour it cannot describe, in particular the presence of non-interacting Dark Matter. Many models that describe dark matter can generically introduce exotic Long-Lived Particles (LLPs). The proposed ANUBIS experiment is designed to search for these LLPs within the ATLAS detector cavern, located approximately 20-30 m from the IP. A...
The COmpact DEtector for EXotics at LHCb (CODEX-b) is a particle physics detector dedicated to displaced decays of exotic long-lived particles (LLPs), compelling signatures of dark sectors Beyond the Standard Model, which arise in theories containing a hierarchy of scales and small parameters. The CODEX-b detector is a cube with 10m per side with two internal sections, planned to be installed...
The FORMOSA detector at the proposed Forward Physics Facility is a scintillator-based experiment designed to search for signatures of "millicharged particles" produced in the forward region of the LHC. This talk will cover the challenges and impressive sensitivity of the FORMOSA detector, expected to extend current limits by over an order of magnitude. A pathfinder experiment, the FORMOSA...
The non-discovery of WIMPs at the LHC and the negative outcome of direct detection experiments have led to a steadily increasing interest in models with light dark matter. Models with a dark matter candidate that has a mass below the Lee-Weinberg bound can predict the right dark matter relic density if a new gauge interaction is introduced in addition to the dark matter candidate. The new...
Models of inelastic (or pseudo-Dirac) dark matter commonly assume an accidental symmetry between the left-handed and right-handed mass terms in order to suppress diagonal couplings. Moreover, they often introduce a gauge symmetry spontaneously broken by the introduction of a dark sector version of the Higgs mechanism. Removing the requirement of such an accidental ad-hoc symmetry instead...
We study the possibility for large volume underground neutrino experiments
to detect the neutrino flux from captured inelastic dark matter in the Sun.
The neutrino spectrum has two components: a mono-energetic "spike" from
pion and kaon decays at rest and a broad-spectrum "shoulder" from prompt
primary meson decays. We focus on detecting the shoulder neutrinos
from annihilation of...
SABRE is an international collaboration that will operate similar particle detectors in the Northern (SABRE North) and Southern Hemispheres (SABRE South). This innovative approach distinguishes possible dark matter signals from seasonal backgrounds, a pioneering strategy only possible with a southern hemisphere experiment. SABRE South is located at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory...
The CYGNO/INITIUM project introduces an innovative approach to directional Dark Matter detection using a gaseous Time Projection Chamber (TPC). Targeting low mass (0.5-50 GeV) WIMPs-like Dark Matter, the experiment uses a He/CF4 gas mixture sensitive to both spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions at atmospheric pressure with optical readout. Building on the success of our 50 L...
The CRESST (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Supercoduncting Thermometers) experiment located in the underground facility of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) aims to measure dark matter particles through their elastic scattering off nuclei in scintillating crystals. The target crystals are equipped with Transition Edge Sensor (TES) thermometers and operated at mK temperature as...
The particle nature of dark matter remains a key unanswered questions in modern physics, despite it making up the majority of matter in the universe. The NEWS-G collaboration is searching for light dark matter candidates using a gaseous detector, the spherical proportional counter. The use of light gaseous targets, including H, He, Ne, etc., combined with a low energy threshold, enable access...
We investigate the phenomenology of a dark sector, extension of the neutrino sector, that simultaneously provides a viable dark matter (DM) candidate, reconciles cosmological constraints with active neutrino masses possibly measurable in laboratories such as KATRIN, and yields near-future testable predictions.
The dark sector comes into thermal equilibrium with Standard Model neutrinos after...
The dark photon is a popular choice when considering a portal between the Standard Model and the dark sector. In this work, we revisit the exclusion constraints on the dark photon, using the latest electroweak precision data from the Particle Data Group, and explore the impact on these constraints due to the CDF measurement of the W boson mass. In addition, we set upper bounds directly on dark...
The FASER experiment at the LHC is designed to search for light, weakly-coupled new particles, and to study high-energy neutrinos. The experiment has been running since 2022, and has collected nearly 200/fb of pp collision data. FASER has released a search for long-lived dark photons, and long lived axion-like-particles (also interpreted in several other scenarios). This talk will summarise...
We present the most recent $BABAR$ searches for reactions that could simultaneously explain the presence of dark matter and the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. This scenario predicts exotic $B$-meson decays into an ordinary-matter baryon and a dark-sector anti-baryon $\psi_D$ with branching fractions accessible at the $B$ factories.
The results are based on the full data set of...
The MilliQan experiment is an ongoing search for millicharged particles (mCPs), which arise naturally in many Dark Sector models which offer potential Dark Matter candidates. The experiment is located just above the CMS experiment at the LHC and leverages this proximity along shielding from most standard model backgrounds to gain sensitivity to mCPs in the mass range of $0.01-45...
Representing approximately 85% of the Universe’s total mass, dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in physics. Even though evidences supporting its existence accumulate, its true nature is still unknown. A leading group of dark matter candidates is Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The search for WIMPs has been an ongoing experimental challenge for over a decade,...
