The 8th Academic Salon of the State Key Laboratory of Dark Matter Physics

Thursday 30 Apr 2026, 11:30 → 13:30 Asia/Shanghai

Title: Searching for dark matter with TRIDENT

Speaker: Dr. Andrew Cheek (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, SJTU)

Host: Prof. Donglian Xu

Abstract:
The thermal WIMP paradigm remains one of the most compelling explanations for dark matter. Direct detection and gamma-ray searches have led detection efforts for decades, dramatically shrinking the viable parameter space and placing strong constraints. However, an untested window persists and the model-independent annihilation cross-section remains largely unexplored above 1 TeV. It is in this energy region that the next generation of neutrino telescopes offer exceptional promise. I will present sensitivity projections for the TRIDENT deep-sea neutrino telescope to dark matter annihilations in the Galactic Centre, showing that TRIDENT can probe annihilation cross-sections below the thermal freeze-out benchmark for dark matter masses between 1–100 TeV. Using a specific dark matter particle model, I will showcase TRIDENT's complementarity with direct detection and gamma-ray searches.

Biography:
Andrew has been a postdoctoral researcher at TDLI since 2024. He completed his PhD in 2019 at The University of Durham, UK, then was a postdoc at UCLouvain in Belgium, and Astrocent in Poland. He is a theorist who has a broad interest in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. The problem of dark matter provides the focus for much of his work, he has worked on dark matter particle phenomenology, primordial black hole cosmology, axion cosmology and neutrino physics. 

Alternative online link: https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/40EUHGR19dYE
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