Cosmology seminar: Håvard Tveit Ihle

Håvard Tveit Ihle is a master student at ITA who will give a status report on his thesis work. The audience is encouraged to provide constructive feedback after the talk

Thermodynamics in the Dark Sector: Evolution of the Dark Matter Temperature

Studying the particle nature of dark matter (DM) is a very active and interesting area of research. Of particular interest to us are the cosmological and astrophysical consequences of DM particle properties. Kinetic decoupling of DM corresponds to a cutoff in the matter power spectrum. Traditional WIMP models for DM (SUSY etc.) typically result in MeV-scale kinetic decoupling, corresponding to an unobservable cutoff. We, however, look for DM models that result in keV-scale kinetic decoupling, leading to a cutoff in the power spectrum at dwarf-galaxy scales, possibly addressing the missing satellite problem. 

This talk will focus mainly on particle physics and thermodynamics in the early universe. In particular we will discuss how the dark sector decouples from the thermal bath of the standard model particles. This leads into a discussion of our work on late kinetic decoupling in DM models. 

Organizer

Signe Riemer-Sørensen and Benjamin Racine
Published Mar. 29, 2016 11:41 AM - Last modified Apr. 5, 2016 4:46 PM