Dark Matter at the LHC and Advanced Detectors
Dr. Christopher Madrid
Postdoc
Fermilab
The existence of Dark Matter (DM) in our universe stands as one of the most compelling indicators of physics beyond the Standard Model. The landscape of DM candidates is vast, and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is actively searching for a wide array of these candidates. These include those predicted near the electroweak scale, such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), Stealth Supersymmetry (SUSY), and strongly coupled DM models. This talk will present the current status of DM searches from CMS and outline the prospects for future discoveries.
Moreover, as we approach the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era, CMS is undergoing a significant upgrade with the introduction of the Endcap Timing Layer (ETL). The ETL will incorporate novel precision timing sensors, specifically Low Gain Avalanche Diodes (LGADs), designed to measure the time-of-arrival of minimum ionizing particles (MIPs) with a precise timing resolution of 30-40 picoseconds. This presentation will explore the design and construction of the ETL, its anticipated impact on the CMS experiment’s physics potential, and recent progress in the development of the next generation of timing detectors.