RTG Seminar by MSc. Yu Chen and MSc. Deepali Singh

MSc. Yu Chen, JMU
Title: Direct Detection of Boosted Light Dark Matter
30.January 2025 - SE 7 - 2:15 p.m.

Dark Matter (DM) direct detection experiments look for the recoil signals triggered by DM particles scattering off target particles. These experiments usually have an energy threshold of keV order, making them insensitive to local DM with small masses. This limitation of the direct detection can be overcome with the help of boosted DM. In this study, I showed that through up-scatterings from cosmic rays, a fraction of (semi-)relativistic DM particles is obtained, and they eventually induce visible recoils in the detector by means of the very same interactions that accelerated them. It provides a promising avenue for probing small DM mass domains that were previously beyond the reach of DM direct detection.
 

MSc. Deepali Singh
Title: From gauge/gravity duality to Composite Higgs Models
30.January 2025 - SE 7

The AdS/CFT correspondence describes the duality between an n-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) and an n+1-dimensional gravity theory which is asymptotically anti de Sitter (AdS) or has a constant negative curvature at infinity. A very important feature of this duality lies in its weak/strong nature, meaning when the gauge theory is strongly coupled and perturbation theory fails, the gravitational side of the duality is described effectively by a classical theory and vice versa. This makes it useful for studying strongly coupled systems, such as those encountered in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) or theories of quantum gravity. In this talk, we will focus on applying this duality to the framework of Composite Higgs models which addresses the hierarchy problem in the Standard model by interpreting the Higgs boson as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson arising from a global symmetry breaking. We will see how AdS/CFT offers powerful tools to study these Composite Higgs scenarios owing to its weak/strong nature. Specifically, we will consider models in which the global group SU(4)xSU(4) gets broken to the diagonal SU(4). We will then use the duality to calculate the spectrum of bosonic bound states emerging in Composite Higgs models.