Speaker
Dr
Kyle Lawson
(University of British Columbia)
Description
I will discuss a novel dark matter model in which the dark matter is not a new fundamental particle but consists of macroscopic composite objects composed of standard model quarks and antiquarks. These objects are referred to as quark “nuggets”. In this model the dark matter is not fundamentally weakly interacting, instead its interactions are strongly suppressed by the nuggets' small cross-section to mass ratio and their resultantly small number density. I will first give a brief overview of the basic properties of this model and then focus on its observational consequences.
In particular I will highlight the ability of current and planned cosmic ray detectors to place strong constraints across much of the allowed nugget parameter space. These types of detectors are particularly important in the context of very high mass dark matter candidates as conventional dark matter searches are not sensitive to their very low flux. These types of direct searches are also strongly complementary to indirect astrophysical observations.
Author
Dr
Kyle Lawson
(University of British Columbia)
