High Energy Physics Seminars

The origin and observed abundance of Dark Matter in the Universe can be explained elegantly by the thermal freeze-out mechanism, leading to a preferred mass range of the Dark Matter particles in the MeV-TeV region. The GeV-TeV mass range is being explored intensely by the variety of experiments searching for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. The sub-GeV region, however, in which the masses of most of the building blocks of stable matter lie, is hardly being tested experimentally to date.
This mass range occurs naturally in Hidden Sector Dark Matter models. The Light Dark Matter eXperiment (LDMX) is a planned electron-beam fixed-target experiment, that has unique potential to conclusively test models for such light Dark Matter in the MeV to GeV range. This presentation will give an overview of the theoretical motivation, the main experimental challenges and how they are addressed as well as projected sensitivities.