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Zhang, Zhengkang

Publications and source records attributed to Zhang, Zhengkang.

7 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Snowmass white paper: Light dark matter direct detection at the interface with condensed matter physics

Direct detection experiments for light (sub-GeV) dark matter are making enormous leaps in reaching previously unexplored theory space. The need for accurate characterizations of target responses has led to a growing interplay between particle and condensed matter physics. This white paper summarizes recent progress on direct detection calculations that utilize state-of-the-art numerical tools in condensed matter physics and effective field theory techniques. These new results provide the theoretical framework for interpreting ongoing and planned experiments using electronic and collective excitations, and for optimizing future searches.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Snowmass Theory Frontier: Astrophysics and Cosmology

We summarize progress made in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology over the past decade and areas of interest for the coming decade. This Report is prepared as the TF09 "Astrophysics and Cosmology" topical group summary for the Theory Frontier as part of the Snowmass 2021 process.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Magic zeroes and hidden symmetries

Selection rules arising from accidental or broken symmetries may be sufficiently obscure that their agency is hidden, leading to the appearance of “magic zeroes” — quantities that are suppressed without apparent recourse to a symmetry explanation. Magic zeroes and their corresponding hidden symmetries may shed new light on parametric hierarchies in the Standard Model and beyond. We identify the hidden symmetry responsible for a recently-discovered magic zero, the vanishing of the putative leading contribution to the anomalous dipole moments of the muon upon integrating out weak doublet and singlet vector-like fermions. Some of the tools involved — spurion analysis leveraging discrete symmetries of the free theory, field redefinitions, spectator fields, and non-supersymmetric non-renormalization theorems — may prove useful in the hunt for new magic zeroes and their hidden symmetries.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Dark matter absorption via electronic excitations

We revisit the calculation of bosonic dark matter absorption via electronic excitations. Working in an effective field theory framework and consistently taking into account in-medium effects, we clarify the relation between dark matter and photon absorption. As is well-known, for vector (dark photon) and pseudoscalar (axion-like particle) dark matter, the absorption rates can be simply related to the target material’s optical properties. However, this is not the case for scalar dark matter, where the dominant contribution comes from a different operator than the one contributing to photon absorption, which is formally next-to-leading-order and does not suffer from in-medium screening. It is therefore imperative to have reliable first-principles numerical calculations and/or semi-analytic modeling in order to predict the detection rate. We present updated sensitivity projections for semiconductor crystal and superconductor targets for ongoing and proposed direct detection experiments.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗