Vorschau

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Abstract

The evasive nature of dark matter has been challenging experimentalists and theorists alike for decades. In order to bridge both approaches, we investigate the phenomenology that different simplified models would imprint on various experiments, stressing the importance of the complementarity that they offer. We also address the different roles that neutrinos can play in the dark matter problem. Finally, we consider a more complete theory able to explain neutrino masses and provide a dark matter candidate. We start by analysing the dark sequential Z' portal, where direct detection and collider searches put the strongest bounds to the Majorana fermion, which plays the role of dark matter. Then we consider a heavy right-handed neutrino as the mediator between the Standard Model and the dark sector, ruling out dark matter masses below 200 GeV through indirect detection. We also explore the possibility of a sterile neutrino in the keV mass range being the dark matter particle itself, assessing how current and future direct detection experiments can impose limits. We conclude by analysing the phenomenology of a Two Higgs-Doublet Model, with the addition of a U(1) gauge symmetry in order to avoid flavour changing neutral interactions and produce neutrino masses at the same time. Further constraints are imposed when dark matter is added in this context.