Dark Matter and the Effective Theory of Direct Detection
Professor Wick Haxton (Department of Physics, Berkeley)

There is a great deal of experimental effort being invested in laboratory searches for heavy dark matter particles, where the signal is a recoiling nucleus produce by dark matter elastic scattering. An interesting question is the number of experiments that will need to be done to ensure that the available discovery space has been adequately covered. Post discovery, a related question will be the number of independent experiment that will need to be completed, to fully characterize the interaction. I will describe an approach based on effective theory that allows one to address these and other questions.