Basic Research Needs for Dark-Matter Small Projects New Initiatives: Report of the Department of Energy’s High Energy Physics Workshop on Dark Matter

Technical Report · Thu Oct 18 04:00:00 EDT 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1659757· OSTI ID:1659757

Kolb, Rocky ^[1]; Weerts, Harry ^[2]; Toro, Natalia ^[3]; Van de Water, Richard ^[4]; Essig, Rouven ^[5]; McKinsey, Dan ^[6]; Zurek, Kathryn ^[7]; Chou, Aaron ^[8]; Graham, Peter ^[9]; Estrada, Juan ^[8]; Incandela, Joe ^[10]; Tait, Tim ^[11]

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1. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)
2. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
3. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
4. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
5. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
6. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
7. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
8. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
9. Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
10. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
11. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)

Only one-sixth of the matter in our universe is made of the fundamental particles we understand. Understanding what the remaining “dark” matter is made of is one of the most important fundamental goals in modern science. It connects such disparate scientific areas as the formation of stars and galaxies, the earliest moments of our universe, and the constituents of matter at the smallest length scales. Astronomical evidence for dark matter has built steadily for eight decades, though the elementary particles or waves that constitute dark matter remain a mystery. Recent theoretical developments have highlighted the importance of searching for dark matter particles in the range from as heavy as a single hydrogen atom to the lightest mass consistent with galactic structure (30 orders of magnitude lighter). Remarkably, small projects at the $5M–$15M scale can explore key milestones throughout this range. By seizing these opportunities, we are now in a position to finally discover the nature of dark matter. The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) identified the search for dark matter as one of the five priority science drivers for the High-Energy Physics Program. The 2014 P5 report further recommended a portfolio of small projects to enable an uninterrupted flow of high-priority results. This Basic Research Needs (BRN) Report presents a program of small projects to lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter. The program makes use of Department of Energy (DOE) facilities and infrastructure and is complementary to the ongoing Generation-2 (G2) dark matter program.

• Research Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC) (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• OSTI ID: 1659757
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS