Feebly interacting particles (FIPs) are subatomic particles defined by having extremely suppressed interactions with the Standard Model (SM) bosons and / or fermions. These particles are potential thermal dark matter candidates, extending the model of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) to include weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) and others. FIP physics is also known as dark-sector physics. [1]
FIP candidates could be massive (FIMP / WIMP) or massless and coupled to the SM particles through some minimal coupling strength. [1] The light FIPs are theorized to be dark matter candidates, and, they provide an explanation for the origin of neutrino masses and CP symmetry in strong interactions. [2]
Neutrinos technically qualify as FIPs, but usually when the acronym "FIP" is used, it is intended to refer to some other, as-yet unknown particle. Cai, Cacciapaglia, and Lee (2022) [3] proposed massive gravitons as feebly Interacting particle candidates. [3] [4]
In astronomy, dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that appears not to interact with light or the electromagnetic field. Dark matter is implied by gravitational effects which cannot be explained by general relativity unless more matter is present than can be seen. Such effects occur in the context of formation and evolution of galaxies, gravitational lensing, the observable universe's current structure, mass position in galactic collisions, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies.
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are hypothetical particles that are one of the proposed candidates for dark matter.
In cosmology and physics, cold dark matter (CDM) is a hypothetical type of dark matter. According to the current standard model of cosmology, Lambda-CDM model, approximately 27% of the universe is dark matter and 68% is dark energy, with only a small fraction being the ordinary baryonic matter that composes stars, planets, and living organisms. Cold refers to the fact that the dark matter moves slowly compared to the speed of light, giving it a vanishing equation of state. Dark indicates that it interacts very weakly with ordinary matter and electromagnetic radiation. Proposed candidates for CDM include weakly interacting massive particles, primordial black holes, and axions.
Hot dark matter (HDM) is a theoretical form of dark matter which consists of particles that travel with ultrarelativistic velocities.
In supersymmetry, the neutralino is a hypothetical particle. In the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), a popular model of realization of supersymmetry at a low energy, there are four neutralinos that are fermions and are electrically neutral, the lightest of which is stable in an R-parity conserved scenario of MSSM. They are typically labeled
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4 although sometimes is also used when is used to refer to charginos.
In supersymmetry theories of particle physics, a gaugino is the hypothetical fermionic supersymmetric field quantum (superpartner) of a gauge field, as predicted by gauge theory combined with supersymmetry. All gauginos have a spin of 1/2, except for the gravitino, which has a spin of 3/2.
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) is a series of experiments designed to directly detect particle dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Using an array of semiconductor detectors at millikelvin temperatures, CDMS has at times set the most sensitive limits on the interactions of WIMP dark matter with terrestrial materials. The first experiment, CDMS I, was run in a tunnel under the Stanford University campus. It was followed by CDMS II experiment in the Soudan Mine. The most recent experiment, SuperCDMS, was located deep underground in the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota and collected data from 2011 through 2015. The series of experiments continues with SuperCDMS SNOLAB, an experiment located at the SNOLAB facility near Sudbury, Ontario in Canada that started construction in 2018 and is expected to start data taking in early 2020s.
Sterile neutrinos are hypothetical particles that interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known, ordinary active neutrinos in the Standard Model, which carry an isospin charge of ±+1/ 2 and engage in the weak interaction. The term typically refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality, which may be inserted into the Standard Model. Particles that possess the quantum numbers of sterile neutrinos and masses great enough such that they do not interfere with the current theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis are often called neutral heavy leptons (NHLs) or heavy neutral leptons (HNLs).
The XENON dark matter research project, operated at the Italian Gran Sasso National Laboratory, is a deep underground detector facility featuring increasingly ambitious experiments aiming to detect hypothetical dark matter particles. The experiments aim to detect particles in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by looking for rare nuclear recoil interactions in a liquid xenon target chamber. The current detector consists of a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC).
Warm dark matter (WDM) is a hypothesized form of dark matter that has properties intermediate between those of hot dark matter and cold dark matter, causing structure formation to occur bottom-up from above their free-streaming scale, and top-down below their free streaming scale. The most common WDM candidates are sterile neutrinos and gravitinos. The WIMPs, when produced non-thermally, could be candidates for warm dark matter. In general, however, the thermally produced WIMPs are cold dark matter candidates.
In particle physics, the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is the generic name given to the lightest of the additional hypothetical particles found in supersymmetric models. In models with R-parity conservation, the LSP is stable; in other words, it cannot decay into any Standard Model particle, since all SM particles have the opposite R-parity. There is extensive observational evidence for an additional component of the matter density in the universe, which goes under the name dark matter. The LSP of supersymmetric models is a dark matter candidate and is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP).
DEAP is a direct dark matter search experiment which uses liquid argon as a target material. DEAP utilizes background discrimination based on the characteristic scintillation pulse-shape of argon. A first-generation detector (DEAP-1) with a 7 kg target mass was operated at Queen's University to test the performance of pulse-shape discrimination at low recoil energies in liquid argon. DEAP-1 was then moved to SNOLAB, 2 km below Earth's surface, in October 2007 and collected data into 2011.
The Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX) aimed to directly detect weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter interactions with ordinary matter on Earth. Despite the wealth of (gravitational) evidence supporting the existence of non-baryonic dark matter in the Universe, dark matter particles in our galaxy have never been directly detected in an experiment. LUX utilized a 370 kg liquid xenon detection mass in a time-projection chamber (TPC) to identify individual particle interactions, searching for faint dark matter interactions with unprecedented sensitivity.
Light dark matter, in astronomy and cosmology, are dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) candidates with masses less than 1 GeV. These particles are heavier than warm dark matter and hot dark matter, but are lighter than the traditional forms of cold dark matter, such as Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). The Lee-Weinberg bound limits the mass of the favored dark matter candidate, WIMPs, that interact via the weak interaction to GeV. This bound arises as follows. The lower the mass of WIMPs is, the lower the annihilation cross section, which is of the order , where m is the WIMP mass and M the mass of the Z-boson. This means that low mass WIMPs, which would be abundantly produced in the early universe, freeze out much earlier and thus at a higher temperature, than higher mass WIMPs. This leads to a higher relic WIMP density. If the mass is lower than GeV the WIMP relic density would overclose the universe.
The Korea Invisible Mass Search (KIMS), is a South Korean experiment, led by Sun Kee Kim, searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), one of the candidates for dark matter. The experiments use CsI(Tl) crystals at Yangyang Underground Laboratory (Y2L), in tunnels from a preexisting underground power plant. KIMS is supported by the Creative Research Initiative program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation. It is the first physics experiment located, and largely built, in Korea.
The dark photon is a hypothetical hidden sector particle, proposed as a force carrier similar to the photon of electromagnetism but potentially connected to dark matter. In a minimal scenario, this new force can be introduced by extending the gauge group of the Standard Model of Particle Physics with a new abelian U(1) gauge symmetry. The corresponding new spin-1 gauge boson can then couple very weakly to electrically charged particles through kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon and could thus be detected. The dark photon can also interact with the Standard Model if some of the fermions are charged under the new abelian group. The possible charging arrangements are restricted by a number of consistency requirements such as anomaly cancellation and constraints coming from Yukawa matrices.
In particle physics, the acronym WISP refers to a largely hypothetical weakly interacting sub-eV particle, or weakly interacting slender particle, or weakly interacting slim particle – low-mass particles which rarely interact with conventional particles.
The Scattering and Neutrino Detector (SND) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN, is an experiment built for the detection of the collider neutrinos. The primary goal of SND is to measure the p+p --> +X process and search for the feebly interacting particles. It will be operational from 2022, during the LHC-Run 3 (2022-2024). SND will be installed in an empty tunnel- TI18 that links the LHC and Super Proton Synchrotron, 480m away from the ATLAS experiment interaction point in the fast forward region and along the beam collision axis.
Direct detection of dark matter is the science of attempting to directly measure dark matter collisions in Earth-based experiments. Modern astrophysical measurements, such as from the Cosmic Microwave Background, strongly indicate that 85% of the matter content of the universe is unaccounted for. Although the existence of dark matter is widely believed, what form it takes or its precise properties has never been determined. There are three main avenues of research to detect dark matter: attempts to make dark matter in accelerators, indirect detection of dark matter annihilation, and direct detection of dark matter in terrestrial labs. The founding principle of direct dark matter detection is that since dark matter is known to exist in the local universe, as the Earth, Solar System, and the Milky Way Galaxy carve out a path through the universe they must intercept dark matter, regardless of what form it takes.