Executive Summary : | This project aims to explore new pathways to discover dark matter (DM), a crucial question in science. The discovery of other interactions of DM is still pending, and the project will use various observables and techniques to either find non-gravitaitonal signatures of DM particle nature or obtain competitive bounds on DM-Standard Model (SM) interactions. The project covers both direct detection (DD) and indirect detection (ID) of DM, focusing on understanding various DM properties such as lifetime, annihilation cross-section, and its coupling to different SM particles. The project will address heavy decaying or annihilating DM, non-standard annihilation signatures of DM, and bound state DM. Heavy DM (masses between 100 TeV to a few hundred PeV) is one of the most well-motivated DM models, and ID is likely the only way to discover these candidates. Current constraints mainly arise from Fermi-LAT gamma-ray and IceCube neutrino observations. Up-to-date observations of other high-energy astrophysics experiments will be used to discover new observables for such DM candidates. The project will also study astrophysical observables where annihilation signatures may leave a signature, opening up new pathways for the discovery of such candidates. Many well-motivated DM models predict that two DM particles will bind together to form a bound state, which can have a dramatic consequence in various DM experiments. The detection type for bound-state DM is DD, and the project aims to study the imprint of the DM form factor in various experiments. The significance of this project is to provide new insights into various DM properties, covering different DM candidates and observables. |