Colloquia

The search for dark matter is ever-evolving and a number of experiments are underway to search for the constituents of dark matter across a vast range of masses. A largely unexplored regime is that where light dark matter particles, with masses between the electron and proton masses, may interact feebly with ordinary matter. I will discuss how small accelerator experiments can produce these dark matter candidates by scattering energetic particles on a fixed target. I will focus on the DarkQuest experiment at Fermilab that uses a proton beam and builds off of an existing detector and accelerator infrastructure. I will also describe how an electron beam can be complimentary used in the Light Dark Matter experiment (LDMX) at SLAC. I will explain the design and challenges of these experiments and their prospects for characterizing a dark matter signal in the near future.