We set conservative, robust constraints on the annihilation and decay of dark matter into various Standard Model final states under various assumptions about the distribution of the dark matter in the Milky Way halo. We use the inclusive photon spect
rum observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope through its main instrument, the Large-Area Telescope (LAT). We use simulated data to first find the optimal regions of interest in the gamma-ray sky, where the expected dark matter signal is largest compared with the expected astrophysical foregrounds. We then require the predicted dark matter signal to be less than the observed photon counts in the a priori optimal regions. This yields a very conservative constraint as we do not attempt to model or subtract astrophysical foregrounds. The resulting limits are competitive with other existing limits, and, for some final states with cuspy dark-matter distributions in the Galactic Center region, disfavor the typical cross section required during freeze-out for a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) to obtain the observed relic abundance.
Experiments designed to measure neutrino oscillations also provide major opportunities for discovering very weakly coupled states. In order to produce neutrinos, experiments such as LSND collide thousands of Coulombs of protons into fixed targets, wh
ile MINOS and MiniBooNE also focus and then dump beams of muons. The neutrino detectors beyond these beam dumps are therefore an excellent arena in which to look for long-lived pseudoscalars or for vector bosons that kinetically mix with the photon. We show that these experiments have significant sensitivity beyond previous beam dumps, and are able to partially close the gap between laboratory experiments and supernovae constraints on pseudoscalars. Future upgrades to the NuMI beamline and Project X will lead to even greater opportunities for discovery. We also discuss thin target experiments with muon beams, such as those available in COMPASS, and show that they constitute a powerful probe for leptophilic PNGBs.
We use new kinematic data from the ultra-faint Milky Way satellite Segue 1 to model its dark matter distribution and derive upper limits on the dark matter annihilation cross-section. Using gamma-ray flux upper limits from the Fermi satellite and MAG
IC, we determine cross-section exclusion regions for dark matter annihilation into a variety of different particles including charged leptons. We show that these exclusion regions are beginning to probe the regions of interest for a dark matter interpretation of the electron and positron fluxes from PAMELA, Fermi, and HESS, and that future observations of Segue 1 have strong prospects for testing such an interpretation. We additionally discuss prospects for detecting annihilation with neutrinos using the IceCube detector, finding that in an optimistic scenario a few neutrino events may be detected. Finally we use the kinematic data to model the Segue 1 dark matter velocity dispersion and constrain Sommerfeld enhanced models.
We explore calculable models with low-energy supersymmetry where the flavor hierarchy is generated by quark and lepton compositeness, and where the composites emerge from the same sector that dynamically breaks supersymmetry. The observed pattern of
Standard Model fermion masses and mixings is obtained by identifying the various generations with composites of different dimension in the ultraviolet. These single-sector supersymmetry breaking models give rise to various spectra of soft masses which are, in many cases, quite distinct from what is commonly found in models of gauge or gravity mediation. In typical models which satisfy all flavor-changing neutral current constraints, both the first and second generation sparticles have masses of order 20 TeV, while the stop mass is near 1 TeV. In other cases, all sparticles obtain masses of order 1 TeV predominantly from gauge mediation, even though the first two generations are composite.
