The Vev Flip-Flop: Dark Matter Decay between Weak Scale Phase Transitions

by Michael Baker (University Mainz)

Monday 4 Dec 2017, 16:30 → 17:30 Europe/Berlin

seminar room 2, building 2A (DESY Hamburg)

We discuss a new alternative to the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) paradigm for dark matter. Rather than being determined by thermal freeze-out, the dark matter abundance in this scenario is set by dark matter decay, which is allowed for a limited amount of time just before the electroweak phase transition. We discuss a concrete model which exhibits a ``vev flip-flop'' and show that it is phenomenologically successful in the most interesting regions of its parameter space. We comment on detection prospects, primarily at the LHC.

Slides Baker.pdf