21–25 Jan 2019
Bormio, Italy
Europe/Berlin timezone

Antimatter measurements at the LHC and implications for indirect dark matter searches

22 Jan 2019, 12:00
30m
Bormio, Italy

Bormio, Italy

Speaker

Dr Francesca Bellini (CERN)

Description

The observation of anti-deuteron and anti-helium in cosmic rays has been suggested as a smoking gun in indirect searches for Dark Matter in the Galaxy, under the hypothesis that the background from secondary astrophysical production is negligible. Constraining predictions for the secondary cosmic-ray flux of anti-helium and anti-deuteron with data is therefore crucial to the experimental searches. This contribution focuses on the impact of antimatter measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on these searches. In proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the TeV collision energy scale, light nuclei and their anti-matter counterparts are produced in equal amounts for a given species. The LHC can be used as “anti-matter factory” to measure the production of d_bar, 3He_bar and 4He_bar. In addition to providing unique information to characterise the system produced in high-energy collisions, accelerator data on anti-nuclei production can be used to constrain production models such as coalescence. The most recent results on anti-nuclei production at the LHC will be presented and implications for cosmic ray physics and indirect dark matter searches will be discussed.

Summary

The observation of anti-deuteron and anti-helium in cosmic rays has been suggested as a
smoking gun in indirect searches for Dark Matter in the Galaxy, under the hypothesis that the
background from secondary astrophysical production is negligible. Constraining predictions for
the secondary cosmic-ray flux of anti-helium and anti-deuteron with data is therefore crucial to
the experimental searches. This contribution focuses on the impact of antimatter measurements
at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on these searches. In proton-proton, proton-nucleus and
nucleus-nucleus collisions at the TeV collision energy scale, light nuclei and their anti-matter
counterparts are produced in equal amounts for a given species. The LHC can be used as
“anti-matter factory” to measure the production of d_bar, 3He_bar and 4He_bar. In addition to providing unique
information to characterise the system produced in high-energy collisions, accelerator data on
anti-nuclei production can be used to constrain production models such as coalescence. The
most recent results on anti-nuclei production at the LHC will be presented and implications for
cosmic ray physics and indirect dark matter searches will be discussed.

Primary author

Presentation materials