Over sky, under ground & down the beamline: The pursuit of WIMP dark matter

One of the clearest signs that we still have much to learn about the fundamental laws of nature is the evidence for invisible "dark" matter. Observations of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and radiation from the Big Bang imply that 85% of the mass in the universe is made of this dark matter, something fundamentally different from the stuff that makes up our everyday objects, and which we cannot describe with our current theory of elementary particles. In the 50 years since we have known about it, a plethora of ideas have been put forward to describe this odd phenomenon. A particularly intriguing proposal is the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), a particle that may also help us explain other mysteries of particle physics. Here at SLAC, we are actively searching for WIMP dark matter. In this lecture, I will describe three complementary  experimental approaches: the search for exotic gamma-ray light with the Fermi Space Telescope, rare nuclear interactions in the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment deep underground and strange events and tracks at a future high energy particle collider. These scientific efforts, which span multiple decades from our past and continue into our future, can converge to help us better understand what our universe is made of. 

Speaker: Linda Xu, SLAC and KIPAC

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