Novel strategies to fully exploit direct detection and LHC dark matter searches

暗物质是一种肉眼不可见的神秘物质，但占宇宙物质的85%。经过几十年的实验努力，我们已经达到了这样一个地步，即大多数最有动力的候选人都在当前或即将进行的实验范围内。我们似乎即将迎来一个重大发现，它将彻底改变我们对暗物质的理解。暗物质由一种全新的亚原子粒子组成，我们对此一无所知。暗物质的存在可以从它对天体运动的引力效应中推断出来。这是一种古老的技术，让人想起勒威耶在19世纪使用的方法，成功地预测了海王星的存在和位置，以解释天王星轨道的不规则性。不幸的是，引力效应并没有提供我们通常用来识别新粒子的任何信息。我的研究重点是寻找关于这种新粒子的基本问题的答案，例如：它有多重？它能感受到自然界的基本力量吗？它是如何融入我们粒子物理学的其余部分的呢？我与实验同事密切合作，提出新的搜索和新技术来解释他们的实验数据。联合收割机将多个实验的结果结合起来是至关重要的，因为令人信服的暗物质探测可能需要在几个不同的实验中进行积极的探测。我将使用两个特别设计的实验结果来回答这些问题。暗物质可以通过地下深处的实验来探测，这些实验寻找暗物质粒子和氙核之间罕见碰撞的迹象，或者可以直接在欧洲核子研究中心的大型强子对撞机（LHC）的质子碰撞中产生。我研究的最终目的是确保我们从这些实验中获得最大量的信息，以便我们能够确定暗物质粒子的属性。我发现这个研究领域如此令人兴奋的是，它不仅提出了一个巨大的问题-宇宙中大多数物质的属性是什么？- 我的研究是前沿科学，将最小亚原子尺度的物理学与整个宇宙的运作联系起来。对暗物质的探测将彻底改变粒子物理学、天体物理学和宇宙学。

Dark matter is a mysterious form of matter that is not visible by eye but which accounts for about 85% of the matter in the Universe. After decades of experimental effort, we have reached the point where most of the best-motivated candidates are within reach of current or upcoming experiments. It seems likely that we are on the threshold of a major discovery that will revolutionise our understanding of dark matter.Dark matter consists of an entirely new type of subatomic particle that we know nothing about. The existence of dark matter can be inferred from its gravitational effects on the motion of celestial objects. This is an old technique that is reminiscent of the approach used by Le Verrier in the 1800s to successfully predict the existence and position of Neptune in order to explain irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. Unfortunately the gravitational effects do not provide us with any information that we would normally use to characterise a new particle. My research is focussed on finding answers to basic questions about this new particle such as: How heavy is it? Does it feel any of the fundamental forces of nature? How does it fit into the rest of our picture of particle physics?I work closely with experimental colleagues to suggest novel searches and new techniques to interpret the data from their experiments. It is crucial to combine results from multiple experiments since a convincing detection of dark matter is likely to require a positive detection in several different experiments. I will use results from two specially designed experiments to answer these questions. Dark matter can be detected with experiments deep underground that search for signs of the rare collision between a dark matter particle and a xenon nucleus, or can be produced directly in collisions of protons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The ultimate aim of my research is to ensure that we maximise the amount of information gained from these experiments so that we can pin down the properties of the dark matter particle.What I find so exciting about this research area is that it not only poses a huge question - what are the properties of most of the matter in the Universe? - but that we are fortunate to live in a time when we have the experimental capability to resolve it. My research is frontier science, connecting physics at the smallest subatomic scales to the workings of the whole Universe. The detection of dark matter would revolutionise particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.