PHYS/ASTR Colloquium: "New Searches for Dark Matter" - Dr. Rebecca Leane (SLAC/KIPAC)

Speaker: Dr. Rebecca Leane (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and KIPAC)

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Title: New Searches for Dark Matter

Abstract:

Most of the matter in the Universe is invisible. What is it made of? In this talk, I will present new strategies that turn the cosmos into a detector, using an array of surprising objects, to search for dark-matter interactions. I’ll connect these ideas to laboratory approaches at underground experiments, showing how they jointly test models that have evaded standard searches. The goal is a coherent program: identify where nature is most sensitive to dark matter, build complementary measurements, and combine them for discovery or sharp exclusion. I will discuss some of the most promising targets over the next few years and how we would recognize a real signal.