The hypothesis of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) has been confirmed on the largest scales of the Universe and must now be stress-tested on sub-galactic scales. Many well-motivated and generic alternatives to CDM can leave spectacular signatures on precisely these scales, affecting the evolution of galaxies as well as their population statistics. Excitingly, over the course of the next decade, a...
Stars are large, plentiful and the Universe provides them to us for free. They provide us with unique laboratories to test fundamental physics at high densities and temperatures, and their large volumes potentially give us access to very rare processes. While stars have been used for decades to probe fundamental physics, they still offer new exciting avenues to search for...
Over the last decade, one of the most popular solutions to the dark matter problem has been a hypothetical class of particles known as axions or axion-like particles. In this talk, I will discuss why the axion is such an attractive candidate and also explain the challenges we face in determining whether axions are the dark matter and which axion(s) are the dark matter. I will highlight results...
The nature of dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Among the many possible candidates, one of the most well-motivated class of models and leading candidate is the ultra-light dark matter (ULDM). ULDM represents the lightest possible dark matter candidates and exhibits wave-like behavior on galactic scales, offering a unique opportunity to probe its properties through...
The fundamental nature of dark matter remains one of the central open questions in physics. A leading hypothesis is that dark matter consists of new elementary particles, whose masses and interaction cross sections span a vast parameter space. Among the various detection technologies, liquid xenon detectors have emerged as the most sensitive for dark matter particles with masses above a few...
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope recently published results from the sixth data release (DR6). I will present these DR6 data and the implications for several cosmological models beyond the standard picture.
The ΛCDM model has long served as the standard paradigm in cosmology, offering a remarkably successful description of the Universe’s evolution. Yet, as observational precision continues to improve, persistent tensions have emerged across a range of probes, including the well-known Hubble constant discrepancy. While individual datasets may each align with ΛCDM, their collective interpretation...
This talk describes recent progress in the Highland Program: an effort to identify useful non-swampy UV clues guiding a low-energy understanding of the Dark Sector.
Pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments aim to detect nHz-frequency gravitational waves using high-precision timing of millisecond pulsars. Multiple PTA collaborations have recently reported evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), expected to arise predominantly from a population of inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries. In this talk, I will discuss how PTA...
