Singlet Scalar Resonances and the Diphoton Excess

ATLAS and CMS recently released the first results of searches for diphoton resonances in 13 TeV data, revealing a modest excess at an invariant mass of approximately 750 GeV. We find that it is generically possible that a singlet scalar resonance is the origin of the excess while avoiding all other constraints. We highlight some of the implications of this model and how compatible it is with certain features of the experimental results. In particular, we find that the very large total width of the excess is difficult to explain with loop-level decays alone, pointing to other interesting bounds and signals if this feature of the data persists. Finally we comment on the robust Z-gamma signature that will always accompany the model we investigate

Observability of Dark Matter Substructure with Pulsar Timing Correlations

Dark matter substructure on small scales is currently weakly constrained, and its study may shed light on the nature of the dark matter. In this work we study the gravitational effects of dark matter substructure on measured pulsar phases in pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). Due to the stability of pulse phases observed over several years, dark matter substructure around the Earth-pulsar system can imprint discernible signatures in gravitational Doppler and Shapiro delays. We compute pulsar phase correlations induced by general dark matter substructure, and project constraints for a few models such as monochromatic primordial black holes (PBHs), and Cold Dark Matter (CDM)-like NFW subhalos. This work extends our previous analysis, which focused on static or single transiting events, to a stochastic analysis of multiple transiting events. We find that stochastic correlations, in a PTA similar to the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), are uniquely powerful to constrain subhalos as light as $\sim 10^{-13}~M_\odot$, with concentrations as low as that predicted by standard CDM.Comment: 45 pages, 12 figure