Dr. Jan Heisig

The phenomena of dark matter and the baryon asymmetry pose two of the most pressing questions in today’s fundamental physics. Conversion-driven freeze-out has emerged as a successful mechanism to generate the observed dark matter relic density. It supports thermalization of dark matter despite its very weak couplings, aligning with the null results from direct and indirect detection experiments. In this talk, we review the mechanism and discuss its link to baryogenesis. Specifically, we present the mechanism of conversion-driven leptogenesis, providing a novel explanation for both dark matter and the baryon asymmetry. The scenario predicts dark matter masses close to the electroweak scale, offering testable predictions, such as soft displaced leptons at the LHC and future colliders.