Speaker
Description
Particle physics and direct detection experiments have yielded null results for dark matter. As a result, interest is growing in theories in which dark matter lives in a hidden sector coupled only weakly to the Standard Model. Many hidden sector theories involve an epoch of matter domination in the very early Universe, deviating from the story of standard Lambda-CDM cosmology. Dark matter perturbations grow faster in matter domination than they would in radiation domination, leading to early formation of dense microhalos. These microhalos boost the possible annihilation signal from dark matter and could be detected via pulsars and microlensing in clusters. Modeling the distribution of these microhalos is key to constraining hidden sector cosmologies with early matter domination. My work analyses how the properties of the hidden sector affect the formation of microhalos and the observables resulting from them. Specifically, I model how relativistic particles in the hidden sector impact microhalo formation, in addition to performing simulations of how these microhalos form, survive and get destroyed in the early Universe.
External references
- 22090063
- 8547b6cd-fa8a-40f9-bb8b-8d301e41e78c
- 96ee8548-dacc-4d19-8a08-6ad94190c17c
