Title: LHC: Shedding Light on the Dark Sectors of the Universe

Speaker: Alexei Safonov (TAMU)

Abstract:

This talk will discuss recent searches for evidence of new light bosons
decaying to pairs of muons using the LHC collision data collected by the CMS
experiment at CERN. These particles are predicted in the extensions of the
Standard Model explaining the discrepancy in the satellite experiments’
measured positron fraction by the annihilation of TeV-scale dark matter in
the galactic halo as well as by the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric models,
which address several of the major issues of conventional SUSY. In these
scenarios, the new bosons are associated with new hidden (dark) sectors and
only very weakly couple to the Standard Model particles making them
virtually undetectable in earlier experiments. The LHC can provide access to
these particles via the production of Higgs bosons that can contain these
new hidden particles in their decay products. Searches for the new boson
decays using muon pairs provides an exceptional sensitivity due to the
striking signature and low background contamination. This analysis relies
heavily on the excellent performance of the detector’s muon system. Most of
the final LHC dataset will be collected at high luminosity and therefore the
ultimate sensitivity of the LHC will be determined by the performance of the
detectors during that time. In the second part of the talk, we will discuss
the CMS plans for the upgrades of the muon detectors and the expected
performance in the high luminosity LHC regime.