Title: Into The Dark: Novel and Complementary Searches in Hidden Sectors

Venue & Time: Blue Room / 11:00-13:30

Abstract: This thesis explores weakly coupled extensions of the Standard Model, focusing on hidden sectors that may evade conventional experimental searches while addressing some of the main open questions in particle physics, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of neutrino masses. The work is organized around three complementary case studies involving a thermal dark matter candidate connected to the Standard Model through a vector portal, axionlike particles produced in core-collapse supernovae and their possible detection at terrestrial neutrino experiments, and the interplay between dark matter direct detection experiments and spallation source facilities to constrain the properties of sterile neutrinos. These three works emphasize the importance of combining different experimental strategies to constrain or reconstruct new weakly coupled physics scenarios.