Down-to-earth dark matter : novel terrestrial mechanisms for dark matter detection
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- There is overwhelming evidence for the existence of dark matter, a component of our universe which is more than five times as abundant as the visible matter we are familiar with. Yet despite longstanding experimental efforts to search for non-gravitational interactions of dark matter, the detection of any such interactions has thus far eluded us. There has therefore arisen an interest within the field in novel methods to detect dark matter. In this thesis, I will outline two new methods which utilize Earth to detect two different types of dark matter. The first searches for an oscillating magnetic field signal of ultralight bosonic dark matter at the surface of the Earth. In analogy to existing cavity/shielded experiments searching for ultralight dark matter, the signal arises because the ground and ionosphere function as conducting cavity walls between which dark matter can source a magnetic field. Based on this effect, we undertake an analysis of global geomagnetic field data from the SuperMAG collaboration in order to set bounds on dark photon and axionlike dark matter parameter spaces. In the latter part of this thesis, I will discuss a proposal to use ancient rocks, dubbed paleo-detectors, as detectors for WIMP dark matter. Over the past O(100) Myr, WIMPs may have induced nuclear recoils within these minerals that disrupted their crystalline structure, leaving long-lived tracks that can be read out today with precision microscopy techniques. I will show that paleo-detectors can give unique sensitivity to dark matter substructure within the Milky Way. This is because paleo-detectors are not only sensitive to the local dark matter density near the Earth today, but also to the dark matter density along Earth's entire galactic trajectory over the lifetime of a paleo-detector.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kalia, Saarik |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Graham, Peter (Peter Wickelgren) |
| Thesis advisor | Graham, Peter (Peter Wickelgren) |
| Thesis advisor | Dimopoulos, Savas, 1952- |
| Thesis advisor | Toro, Natalia |
| Degree committee member | Dimopoulos, Savas, 1952- |
| Degree committee member | Toro, Natalia |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Physics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Saarik Kalia. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/bf057gf4750 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Saarik Kalia
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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