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Egana-Ugrinovic, Daniel

Publications and source records attributed to Egana-Ugrinovic, Daniel.

New physics searches at kaon and hyperon factories

Rare meson decays are among the most sensitive probes of both heavy and light new physics. Among them, new physics searches using kaons benefit from their small total decay widths and the availability of very large datasets. On the other hand, useful complementary information is provided by hyperon decay measurements. We summarize the relevant phenomenological models and the status of the searches in a comprehensive list of kaon and hyperon decay channels. We identify new search strategies for under-explored signatures, and demonstrate that the improved sensitivities from current and next-generation experiments could lead to a qualitative leap in the exploration of light dark sectors.

NA62 experiment↗

Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Calibrations and backgrounds for dark matter direct detection

Future dark matter direct detection experiments will reach unprecedented levels of sensitivity. Achieving this sensitivity will require more precise models of signal and background rates in future detectors. Improving the precision of signal and background modeling goes hand-in-hand with novel calibration techniques that can probe rare processes and lower threshold detector response. The goal of this white paper is to outline community needs to meet the background and calibration requirements of next-generation dark matter direct detection experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

The cosmological evolution of self-interacting dark matter

We study the evolution of cosmological perturbations in dark-matter models with elastic and velocity-independent self interactions. Such interactions are imprinted in the matter-power spectrum as dark acoustic oscillations, which can be experimentally explored to determine the strength of the self scatterings. Models with self interactions have similarities to warm dark matter, as they lead to suppression of power on small scales when the dark-matter velocity dispersion is sizable. Nonetheless, both the physical origin and the extent of the suppression differ for self-interacting dark matter from conventional warm dark matter, with a dark sound horizon controlling the reduction of power in the former case, and a free-streaming length in the latter. We thoroughly analyze these differences by performing computations of the linear power spectrum using a newly developed Boltzmann code. We find that while current Lyman-α data disfavor conventional warm dark matter with a mass less than 5.3 keV, when self interactions are included at their maximal value consistent with bounds from the Bullet Cluster, the limits are relaxed to 4.4 keV. Lastly, we make use of our analysis to set novel bounds on light scalar singlet dark matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗