Antisymmetric tensor portals to dark matter

In the age of modern physics, dark matter is one of the primary unsolved problems from which the failures of our current understanding are laid bare. Since the 1970s, a growing body of evidence has been collected supporting the idea that there is a new form of elementary matter that is fundamentally different from that which we see in everyday life. This mysterious new substance is normally referred to as “dark matter”. Mounting evidence also indicates that it makes up a significant portion of the universe—somewhere around five times that of “ordinary” matter. Perhaps most surprising is that even though it is so abundant, we know precious little about dark matter’s inherent characteristics, nor do we have clear path towards directly studying it via experiment. Many attempts at creating particle models for dark matter have been devised, although none yet fully resolve the tension. In this thesis, we will develop another potential description of dark matter through a portal mediated by the so-called “Kalb-Ramond antisymmetric tensor field” or “KR field”. This field first arose in string theory; if dark matter generated through the KR portal were to be detected, it would be the first experimental corroboration of the string theory (and supergravity) frameworks. We show that annihilations between dark and standard fermions mediated by the KR field are capable of plausibly creating the observed dark matter cosmic abundance through two separate early-universe production mechanisms, thermal freeze-out and freeze-in. For the freeze-out mechanism we find the dark matter and mediator masses lie in the TeV to tens-of-TeV range, whereas freeze-in results in consistent PeV scale mediators masses, with dark matter mass ranging anywhere from keV to TeV. We find that the required couplings for these solutions are generically lower for the freeze-in mechanism when compared to the freeze-out mechanism, which is in accordance with their theoretical underpinnings.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (M.Sc.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor

University of Saskatchewan

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Magnus, Alex J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Dick, Rainer
• Tanaka, Kaori
• Sowa, Artur
• Boland, Mark

• Dark matter
• Antisymmetric tensor fields
• Kalb-Ramond field
• String theory

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10388/17416

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:harvest.usask.ca:10388/17416