Visible light exposure of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's Very Large Telescope, X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory & math reconstruction of dark matter location. D. Coe & J. Merten/ESO/NASA/ESA/CXC
Theory Seminar

Physics Theory Seminar with Soubhik Kumar on Heavy Axions across Frontiers

Soubhik Kumar (Hosted by Dev) from University of California, Berkeley will be presenting the seminar "Heavy Axions across Frontiers: Searches at X-ray/Gamma-ray Telescopes and Beam Dump Facilities"

Heavy axions can arise in the context of Grand Unified theories where a confining dark gauge group unifies with the Standard Model (SM) gauge group. Depending on the strength of the axion coupling to the SM, heavy axion lifetimes can vary drastically, requiring very different observational probes. I will discuss two such probes. First, I will show heavy axions with MeV scale masses, but with large decay constants of order the Grand Unification scale, can be a decaying dark matter candidate. Correspondingly, it can be searched for in future X-ray/Gamma-ray telescopes, for example in Athena, Theseus, and AMEGO. Second, heavy axions in GeV mass range but with TeV-PeV decay constants can give rise to prompt or displaced decays in beam dump and collider environments. Experiments such as LHC, DUNE, or FASER would be able to probe such axions.