Browsing by Author "Berger, Joshua"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Phase of confined electroweak force in the early Universe
    (American Physical Society, 2019) Berger, Joshua; Long, Andrew J.; Turner, Jessica
    We consider a modified cosmological history in which the presence of beyond-the-Standard-Model physics causes the weak gauge sector, SU(2)L, to confine before it is Higgsed. Under the assumption of chiral symmetry breaking, quark and lepton weak doublets form condensates that break the global symmetries of the Standard Model, including baryon and lepton number, down to a U(1) subgroup under which only the weak singlet fermions and Higgs boson transform. The weakly coupled gauge group SU(3)c×U(1)Y is also broken to an SU(2)c×U(1)Q gauge group. The light states include (pseudo-)Goldstone bosons of the global symmetry breaking, mostly elementary fermions primarily composed of the weak singlet quarks and leptons, and the gauge bosons of the weakly coupled gauge group. We discuss possible signatures from early Universe cosmology including gravitational wave radiation, topological defects, and baryogenesis.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Snowmass2021 cosmic frontier white paper: Ultraheavy particle dark matter
    (SciPost Foundation, 2023) Carney, Daniel; Raj, Nirmal; Bai, Yang; Berger, Joshua; Blanco, Carlos; Bramante, Joseph; Cappiello, Christopher; Dutra, Maíra; Ebadi, Reza; Engel, Kristi; Kolb, Edward; Harding, J. Patrick; Kumar, Jason; Krnjaic, Gordan; Lang, Rafael F.; Leane, Rebecca K.; Lehmann, Benjamin V.; Li, Shengchao; Long, Andrew J.; Mohlabeng, Gopolang; Olcina, Ibles; Pueschel, Elisa; Rodd, Nicholas L.; Rott, Carsten; Sengupta, Dipan; Shakya, Bibhushan; Walsworth, Ronald L.; Westerdale, Shawn
    We outline the unique opportunities and challenges in the search for "ultraheavy" dark matter candidates with masses between roughly 10 TeV and the Planck scale mpl≈1016 TeV. This mass range presents a wide and relatively unexplored dark matter parameter space, with a rich space of possible models and cosmic histories. We emphasize that both current detectors and new, targeted search techniques, via both direct and indirect detection, are poised to contribute to searches for ultraheavy particle dark matter in the coming decade. We highlight the need for new developments in this space, including new analyses of current and imminent direct and indirect experiments targeting ultraheavy dark matter and development of new, ultra-sensitive detector technologies like next-generation liquid noble detectors, neutrino experiments, and specialized quantum sensing techniques.