The Nuclear Star Cluster (NSC) resides at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and represents an extremely dense stellar system. Most such systems are also known to harbor Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs).
Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the formation of NSC+SMBH structures, with two prevailing scenarios:
(i) the inward migration of gas toward the galactic center, followed...
Dark matter constitutes about 85% of the matter content of the Universe, yet its microscopic nature remains unknown. While astrophysical and cosmological observations provide compelling evidence for its existence, they do not reveal how it interacts with Standard Model particles beyond gravity. Collider experiments such as the LHC provide a complementary avenue of investigation by directly...
I will review the state-of-the-art of dark matter (DM) searches in dwarf irregular galaxies (dIrrs). DIrrs have been proposed as new astrophysical targets of interest for DM searches in gamma rays, complementary to dwarf spheroidal galaxies, galaxy clusters and the Galactic center. DIrrs show high DM content (with respect to the luminous matter), relatively close distance and low gamma-ray...
We use surface brightness and velocity dispersion data to constrain the parameters of the luminous and dark matter densities for a sample of 10 Milky Way, dwarf spheroidal galaxies (MW dSphs). We model the luminous matter density with a generalized Plummer profile, of inner slope $\gamma_*$, and the dark matter (DM) density with a Zhao-type model, of inner slope $\gamma$. The specific DM...
The presence of ultralight dark matter in the early Universe suppresses small-scale structure formation. Moreover, if it couples to the Standard Model, it can induce a variation of fundamental constants. In this talk, I will discuss the cosmological impact of an ultralight dark matter field with an effective quadratic coupling to the Standard Model, such that the fine structure constant and...
