EPT Seminar

Date
Tue, May 2, 2017 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Location
PSC 3150

Description

Speaker: Michael Baker

Speaker Institution: Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz

Title: The Vev Flip-Flop: Dark Matter Decay between Weak Scale Phase Transitions

Abstract: We discuss a new alternative to the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) paradigm for dark matter. Rather than being determined by thermal freeze-out, the dark matter abundance in this scenario is set by dark matter decay, which is allowed for a limited amount of time just before the electroweak phase transition. We discuss a concrete model which exhibits a `vev flip-flop' and show that it is phenomenologically successful in the most interesting regions of its parameter space. We comment on detection prospects, primarily at the LHC.