Andrew Fitzpatrick, Boston University

Title: "Effective Field Theory and the Phenomenology of Dark Matter Direct Detection” (Video)

Abstract: Direct detection searches for dark matter have made significant advances in their level of sensitivity and are expected to improve further in the near future.  The results of these experiments are often interpreted in a limited context of certain kinds of interactions between dark matter and standard matter, but the full range of possible interactions is much richer.  We discuss the theoretical and experimental motivation for considering a broad range of possible structure in the dark matter content of the universe, and a framework for systematically describing this wider range of possibilities.  We describe results from on-going work bringing together this framework with nuclear physics results in order to provide a complete `dictionary’ for the experimental predictions in this larger parameter space.