Special Issue "Hidden Dark Sector in High Energy Physics"
A special issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994). This special issue belongs to the section "Physics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2023 | Viewed by 6505

Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Standard Model (SM), while extremely powerful as a description of strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions, is not a natural candidate to explain dark matter. Theoretical and experimental motivations exist for the existence of a hidden or dark sector of phenomena that couples either weakly or in a special way to SM fields. Hidden sectors near the weak scale are motivated by naturalness, thermal dark matter, electroweak baryogenesis but also represent a generic expectation for physics beyond the SM. If there is such a family of particles and interactions, they may be accessible experimentally at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and at future high energy colliders. As a prototypical hidden sector can be considered, there is the compelling possibility of a spontaneously broken dark U(1)D gauge symmetry, mediated by a vector boson called the dark photon (ZD). The search for such a hidden sector is an important component of the LHC physics program. The LHC provides a unique tool to explore such models where these new states can be produced using, for example, exotic Higgs boson decays to light scalars or light vectors and inclusive dark photon decays or associated productions as a portal to this hidden or dark sector that has remained inaccessible up to now.
Dr. Theodota Lagouri
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Symmetry is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- high energy collider physics
- LHC
- hidden dark sector
- exotic Higgs decays
- dark photon
- dark matter (DM)
- beyond the Standard Model (BSM)