Description:

Abstract: Over 80% of the mass in the universe is made up of an invisible substance known as dark matter. Evidence of dark matter's existence has been found by a wide variety of astrophysical observations. But exactly is dark matter? This is a complete mystery. There are a number of hypotheses that are being tested by experiments throughout the world, among them the idea that dark matter is an ultralight bosonic field that interacts with atomic spins. Cal State East Bay is part of two different international collaborations to test versions of the ultralight bosonic dark matter hypothesis. The Global Network of Optical Magnetometers to search for Exotic physics (GNOME) is a worldwide array of atomic magnetometers that searches for transient signals generated if the Earth passes through an invisible bosonic “wall” or “star” or even from a burst from a cataclysmic astrophysical event such as a binary black hole merger. In the Cosmic Axion Spin Precession Experiment (CASPEr), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques are being used to search for oscillating dipole interactions induced by bosonic dark matter fields.

Professor Derek F. Jackson Kimball, Cal State East Bay

Keywords: CFP, Physics