Sub-GeV dark matter and dark showers at beam-dump experiments

by Elias Bernreuther

Friday 24 Apr 2026, 12:30 → 14:30 America/Los_Angeles

48/2-224 - Madrone (SLAC)

Dark matter (DM) particles may arise as dark pions from the confinement of dark quarks in a strongly interacting dark sector. Their relic abundance is determined by number-changing processes within the dark sector. However, this so-called SIMP mechanism faces prohibitive constraints from bounds on DM self-interactions. In this talk I will show that taking dark vector mesons into account in the freeze-out process resolves this issue and predicts visible signals at accelerator experiments. In particular, I will discuss dark showers arising from dark quark production at beam-dump experiments, such as SHiP.

dark_showers.pdf