Bound States in Heavy Dark Sectors: from WIMPonium to Squeezeout

Abstract
The nature of dark matter remains one of the great puzzles of fundamental physics, with potential connections to a plethora of deep questions. While dark matter is often assumed to be collisionless, dark matter particles may interact with each other through either the known forces of the Standard Model of particle physics, or new "dark" forces, while remaining consistent with current constraints. In either case, dark matter may form bound states similar to those we observe in ordinary matter. I will discuss a range of possible implications of the existence of such bound states, including observational signatures in gamma-ray telescopes, and modifications to the history of the cosmos allowing for strikingly heavy dark matter in strongly-interacting dark sectors.
Bio
Tracy Slatyer is a theoretical physicist who is a tenured professor at MIT. She obtained a Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University in 2010. After spending three years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, she joined the MIT Physics department as a faculty member in 2013. Her research activity is motivated by fundamental questions in particle physics, such as the nature of dark matter, and she looks for new physics signatures in astrophysical and cosmological data. She provided seminal contributions in several aspects of astroparticle physics including theoretical predictions for gamma-ray signals from dark matter annihilations, modeling energy injections in the expansion history of our universe, and the discovery of the giant gamma-ray structures known as the “Fermi Bubbles” erupting from the center of the Milky Way. Her outstanding research results were recognized by several awards including the Bruno Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 2014 and the New Horizons in Physics Prize in 2021.