TH Colloquium - "Portals to the Dark Sector"

ABSTRACT
A handful of open questions, such as the nature of the cosmic dark matter, compel the search for a new paradigm of matter and forces. A novel, yet plausible, element of this framework may be a hidden or dark sector of new elementary particles, which does not experience the familiar strong and electroweak interactions. Such a hidden world may still influence our visible world if there is a very weak interaction, or portal, between the two sectors. I will introduce the basic theoretical framework of dark sectors and portals and highlight the growing experimental program to search for a variety of novel phenomena associated with these theories.

BIO
Brian Batell obtained his PhD at Minnesota University and was research associate at Perimeter Institute, Chicago University and CERN. He is currently professor at Pittsburg University. His research is focused on the study of fundamental interactions at the intensity and energy frontiers. He has been proposing new observational strategies to search for new phenomena and is an expert of dark matter and of theoretical frameworks involving new dark sectors.

Q&A