Speaker
Felix Kahlhoefer
(DESY)
Description
I will consider scenarios where dark matter interacts with
Standard Model states via the exchange of a light pseudoscalar. While there
are typically only weak constraints from direct dark matter searches, the
pseudoscalar mediator will induce new interactions between Standard Model
particles, providing a promising alternative way to test these models. I
will present the constraints arising from rare meson decays and fixed target
experiments, with a special focus on how to reliably calculate the
production of axion-like particles in proton beam fixed-target experiments
such as NA62 or SHiP. The resulting bounds are highly complementary to the
information inferred from the dark matter relic density and the constraints
from primordial nucleosynthesis. These findings have important implications
for the dark matter self-interaction cross section and the prospects of
probing dark matter coupled to a light pseudoscalar with direct or indirect
detection experiments.
