Exploring Novel Signatures for Dark Matter at the LHC

The nature of dark matter (DM) remains one of the outstanding mysteries in particle physics and presents strong evidence for physics beyond the standard model (SM). Despite years of searching, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN have yet to see any evidence for an excess of events with large missing transverse momentum, a possible indication of certain DM signatures. Considering this, I will discuss an alternative strategy to look for collider produced DM, which is based on a suite of models containing a dark sector of particles and a new strong force called “dark QCD.” This new strongly coupled dark sector would provide both a stable, composite dark matter candidate in the form of “dark hadrons” as well as a tantalizing suite of phenomenology. I will present ongoing and future searches at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment looking at phenomenological signatures of dark QCD, focusing on emerging jets. I will also discuss how new machine learning techniques and upgrades to the CMS trigger system will enhance future searches for dark sector models.

VIa Zoom

Host: Andrey Korytov