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Ultralight Millicharged Dark Matter via Misalignment

Speaker
Zach Bogorad
Date
Fri April 22nd 2022, 3:30pm
Affiliation
Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics
Event Sponsor
Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics
Location
PAB 102/103 and Zoom

New millicharged particles—particles with weak electromagnetic interactions, either through an explicit photon coupling or through a kinetically-mixed hidden photon—are a well-motivated dark matter candidate. Previous models of millicharged dark matter have assumed thermal production mechanisms, which are incompatible with observed stellar cooling rates for dark matter masses below roughly 10 keV. In this talk, I will present an alternative family of millicharge models that can be produced non-thermally via misalignment. I will then discuss the phenomenology of such a model, including both constraints on it from existing observations and the potential to detect it using direct deflection experiments.