2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Effective field theory for sub-MeV dark matter direct detection
| Project/Area Number |
20H01896
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
Melia Thomas 東京大学, カブリ数物連携宇宙研究機構, 准教授 (30814909)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Effective field theory / Sub-MeV dark matter / Light dark matter |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Developed a systematic understanding of an important class of effective field theories (EFTs), relevant for condensed matter systems that could provide insight into dark matter scattering. Specifically, these are systems that have spontaneously broken gauge symmetries. A systematic treatment of such EFTs was lacking, even in the more studied relativistic case. The classic and arguably most important example is the Higgs mechanism in the standard model. A complete and systematic understanding of this was achieved using Hilbert series and scattering amplitude techniques that were in turn developed from prior understanding of theories with spontaneously broken global symmetries. This work corrected some of the existing literature on the so-called Higgs Effective Field Theory, which is widely used at the large hadron collider to study the Higgs sector.
An interesting possibility was identified and explored, that the effective field theory that was being developed for the detector could also be applied to the dark matter itself. This was elucidated, and found that a class of light dark matter could be well understood using EFT techniques (and resolve some mysteries surrounding small scale anomalies in galaxy and galaxy cluster observations).
The framework for understanding quantum effects in EFTs that are relevant to a large universality class of condensed matter systems was further developed, and new 'non-renormalization' theorems which dictate zero is what is termed the anomalous dimension matrix of a theory were discovered.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Development of systematic techniques to study EFT is going ahead largely according to plan. Because intuition had to be obtained in a relativistic setting in the new arena of spontaneously broken gauge symmetries, and because there was an urgent and important application to large hadron collider physics, an additional effort was put into this application, slightly outside the originally planned scope of application of the EFT techniques.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Develop systematic understanding of non relativistic EFTs, and perform calculations of sub-MeV scattering in generic scenarios, in line with achieving the goal of the project.
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