Search Talks

Dark matter is all around us, however its particle physics nature is still mysterious. Searches for dark matter have largely focused on candidates with weak scale interactions to the standard model particles, the so-called WIMP paradigm. However, the parameter space of the WIMP paradigm is becoming increasingly constrained by both the LHC and direct detection experiments. Another possibility that is well motivated both theoretically and observationally is to have a dark sector connected with the visible one via a mediator whose coupling to the visible one is tiny. In this talk, based on my own work, I will discuss models in this direction and how to search for signals from the dark sector using various experiments including particle accelerators, dark matter direct detection experiments, cosmic ray experiments, and cosmic microwave background observation. 

How can we quantify the entanglement between subsystems when we only have access to incomplete information about them and their environment?‎ Existing approaches (such as Rényi entropies) can only detect the short-range entanglement across a boundary between a subsystem and its surroundings, and then only if the whole system is pure. These methods cannot detect the long-range entanglement between two subsystems embedded in a larger system. There is a natural choice of entanglement measure for this situation, called the entanglement negativity, which can do this and cope with mixed states as well. However it is defined in terms of the full density matrix, which we generally won't have access to.

I will begin this talk with a brief overview ‎of some replica trick-based eigenspectrum reconstruction methods, and their various strengths and limitations. Then I will show how to modify these to find the moments of the partially transposed density matrix. Once those numbers have been obtained, it is possible to modify the earlier eigenspectrum reconstruction methods to obtain lower and upper bounds for the entanglement negativity.

Addendum: An audience member pointed out that the adjective "quasi-topological" already has a meaning and it's something different from the subject of this talk. So with hindsight it should have been called `quasi-conformal quantum computing'

We will discuss some expectations regarding properties of N=1 SCFTs in four dimensions obtained by compactifying (1,0) theories in six dimensions on a Riemann surface. We will illustrate in detail how these properties come about in the special case of compactifications of two M5 branes probing Z_2 singularity.  In particular, we will obtain a large class of strongly coupled  N=1 theories in four dimensions obtained in such compactifications. We will derive some of their robust properties, such as anomalies and supersymmetric indices.

In the framework of the ordinary seesaw model with right-handed neutrinos (and nothing else) we show that the total lepton number violating decay of the Higgs doublet into a right-handed neutrino and a standard model lepton can successfully account for the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. This is possible thanks to thermal effects shortly before the sphalerons decouple.

The AdS/Ricci-flat (AdS/RF) correspondence is a map between families of asymptotically locally AdS solutions on a torus and families of asymptotically flat spacetimes on a sphere. In this talk I will discuss how to relax these restrictions for linearized perturbations around solutions connected via the original AdS/RF correspondence.
To this end we perform a Kaluza-Klein (KK)  reduction, keeping all (massive) KK modes,  of AdS on torus and of Minkowski on a sphere.  We show that in the limit of large dimension of the compact manifolds (torus and sphere), the AdS/RF correspondence maps individual KK modes from one side to the other.
When the dimension is finite, the correspondence maps single modes to infinite superpositions of modes. One may further take appropriate limits so that there is either no torus (AdS side) or no sphere (Minkowski side) to map perturbations of solutions that possess no symmetry, thus completely relaxing the original restrictions.
This correspondence should allow us to develop a detailed holographic dictionary for asymptotically flat spacetimes.

The origin and composition of 85% of the matter in the universe is completely unknown. Among several viable options, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are motivated dark matter candidates that can be tested by different and complementary search strategies. Crucially, different searches probe WIMP couplings at different energy scales, and such a separation of scales has striking consequences in connecting different experimental probes. This motivates the development of theoretical tools to properly connect the different energy scales involved in constraining WIMP models. I will introduce these tools and I will illustrate with several examples how crucial the inclusion of these effects in WIMP searches is.