Self-Destructing Dark Matter

Speaker: Yuval Grossman

Self-Destructing Dark Matter (SDDM), a new class of dark matter models will be presented In this class of models, a component of dark matter can transition from a long-lived state to a short-lived one by scattering off of a nucleus or an electron in the Earth. The short-lived state then decays to Standard Model particles, generating a dark matter signal with a visible energy of order the dark matter mass rather than just its recoil. This leads to striking signals in large detectors with high energy thresholds. Examples of models which exhibit self-destruction, all inspired by bound state dynamics in the Standard Model will be presented.