Speaker
Dr
Gabriele Piperno
Description
Dark Matter elusiveness could be explained by speculating that it lives in a separate sector with respect to the Standard Model (SM) and that interacts with it only by means of messengers. The simplest model foresees just one messenger: a, possibly massive, vector boson given by a new U(1) symmetry. This mediator can faintly mix with the photon and, hence, interact with SM charged particles, seeing an effective charge equal to $\varepsilon e$, with $e$ SM charge.
The PADME experiment, hosted at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, is designed to search for such kind of particle, looking for its production in $e^{+}\,e^{-}$ annihilations. Exploiting the DA$\Phi$NE linac, the collaboration aims to collect $10^{13}$ positrons on target by the end of 2018, reaching a sensitivity of $\sim10^{-3}$ for masses up to $23.7\,\mbox{MeV}$.
