Closing In on Thermal Relics with High-Energy Gamma-Ray for Dark Matter searches

Tuesday 22 Sept 2026, 14:00 → 15:00 Asia/Shanghai

Tsung-Dao Lee Institute/S4F-SW - Open Area (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute)

Tomohiro Inada

Title: Closing In on Thermal Relics with High-Energy Gamma-Ray for Dark Matter searches
Time: 14:00-15:00 (UTC+8), 22 September 2026, Tuesday
Host: Hao Zhou
Join Tencent Meeting：https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/r7mbEZhOrREY
Meeting ID: 161428684 (no password)

Abstract：
Identifying the particle nature of dark matter remains a central challenge in fundamental physics. Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the leading candidates. At TeV-scale masses, Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) search for very-high-energy gamma rays from dark matter annihilation in dense regions such as the Galactic Center. By probing the annihilation cross section, these observations test whether WIMPs could have originated as thermal relics in the early Universe and complement collider and underground searches.In this talk, I will review recent WIMP searches with current-generation IACTs, and present initial results from LST-1, completed in 2018 and now taking data on La Palma. LST-1 is the first Large-Sized Telescope built for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), a next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory with a northern array on La Palma, Spain, and a southern array near Paranal, Chile. Together, the arrays will cover energies from about 20 GeV to 300 TeV with sensitivity up to ten times better than current instruments. CTAO will also play a key role in multi-messenger astronomy by combining gamma-ray observations with information from neutrinos and gravitational waves. I will discuss prospects for stereoscopic observations with multiple LSTs and CTAO searches for TeV-scale dark matter.

Biography:
Dr. Tomohiro Inada is an Assistant Professor at Kyushu University and an experimental physicist working at the interface between particle physics and astrophysics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2020 and subsequently held positions as a Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar at Tsinghua University and an Experimental Physics Research Fellow at CERN. His work has received national recognition through several early-career awards from both astroparticle physics and high-energy physics communities in Japan, in addition to Outstanding Postdoctoral Fellow Finalist Award at Tsinghua University. His research uses very-high-energy gamma rays to investigate dark matter and physics beyond the Standard Model. He led dark-matter search at the Galactic Centre　with the MAGIC telescopes in La Palma, Canary islands, and now coordinates dark-matter physics within CTAO, which is the next-generation of high-energy gamma-ray observatory.