Talks

I will discuss cosmological, astrophysical and collider constraints on thermal dark matter with mass in the range 1 MeV to 10 GeV. CMB observations can be evaded if the DM relic density is sufficiently asymmetric, while collider constraints generally require sufficiently light mediators. These light mediators can give rise to significant DM self-interactions, and I will describe bounds on such interactions from dark matter halo shapes. Finally, I will describe how these constraints map onto the parameter space of DM-electron and DM-nucleon scattering cross sections for direct detection.

Quantum field theory provides the framework for the Standard Model of particle physics and plays a key role in many areas of physics. However, calculations are generally computationally complex and limited to weak interaction strengths. I shall describe a polynomial-time algorithm for computing, on a quantum computer, relativistic scattering amplitudes in massive scalar quantum field theories. The quantum algorithm applies at both weak and strong coupling, achieving exponential speedup over known classical methods at high precision or strong coupling. The study of such quantum algorithms may also help us learn more about the nature and foundations of quantum field theory itself.

We propose that the fermionic superpartner of a weak-scale Goldstone boson can be a nat- ural WIMP candidate. The p-wave annihilation of this `Goldstone fermion' into pairs of Gold- stone bosons automatically generates the correct relic abundance, whereas the XENON100 direct detection bounds are evaded due to suppressed couplings to the Standard Model. Further, it is able to avoid indirect detection constraints because the relevant s-wave annihi- lations are small. The interactions of the Goldstone supermultiplet can induce non-standard Higgs decays and novel collider phenomenology.