When:
Friday, November 6, 2015
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT
Where: Technological Institute, L211, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public
Contact:
Pamela Villalovoz
13645
Group: Physics and Astronomy Colloquia
Category: Academic
Title: Indirect Dark Matter Detection
Speaker: Kev Abazajian, UC Irvine
Abstract: Cosmological dark matter has been known to exist for over 80 years, and recent cosmological observations have determined its abundance to better than 1%: dark matter comprises (84.2± 0.7)% of all matter in the Universe. For many leading candidates for the dark matter, it is not so dark, with predictions for photons being emitted at a slow rate that is tied to the mechanism that produced the dark matter at an early epoch. I will discuss observable signal processes, as well as the cosmological and particle physics implications of two recent candidates signals of dark matter photons: first, gamma rays in a continuum "bump" at a few GeV which can be due to weak-scale dark matter annihilation in the Galactic Center; and, second, X-rays from clusters of galaxies, the Milky Way Galactic Center, and Andromeda consistent with monoenergetic photons from dark matter decay such as that predicted from sterile neutrino dark matter.
Host: André de Gouvêa
Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, colloquium