Seminar: Phenomenology of strongly interacting dark sectors (Felix Kahlhöfer)

There is strong evidence that the dominant form of matter in the universe is dark, in the sense that it only has extremely weak (possibly only gravitational) interactions with known particles. Nevertheless, it is perfectly possible for dark matter particles to have strong interactions among themselves, arising from new forces beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Indeed, certain astrophysical observations, known as the small-scale problems of cosmology, favour such self-interacting dark matter models over conventional models of collisionless dark matter such as WIMPs or axions. In my talk I will discuss a particularly intriguing explanation of these findings in terms of a dark sector with new strong dynamics and confinement at low energies. I will discuss the mechanisms that determine the amount of dark matter produced in the early universe and how we can search for these particles at hadron and electron-positron colliders.