I work on astroparticle physics, cosmology and particle physics beyond the standard model - and thus broadly speaking on CERN-related physics (but apparently not on CERN-related physics).
My research so far has to a large degree focussed on dark matter, both in phenomenological studies and in the context of concrete models like supersymmetry or large extra dimensions. I wrote, e.g., a pedagogical Primer on Dark Matter, intended as a first entry point for students; for more advanced readers, there is also a review on dark matter searches with gamma rays, or another review on dark matter and cosmological small-scale structure. Further interests include gravitational waves, cosmic rays, primordial density fluctuations and cosmological structure formation, as well as global fits of new physics (within the GAMBIT project).
I am the main current developer of DarkSUSY, a publicly available numerical packag
e to compute dark matter properties in various particle physics frameworks (i.e. not only supersymmetry, despite the name). Click on the logo to get the most recent release, or here to see the technical articles describing the current version.
For more details, see the list of articles below (the wordcloud is created from the abstracts). A recent idea that picked up some press coverage is pandemic dark matter, proposing that the production of dark matter might have striking similarities to the spread of diseases (see also forskning.no and Abels tårn).
Recent activity
Much current focus lies on how to probe secluded dark sectors with cosmological methods (see also the ongoing DarkTurns project, a FRIPRO grant of the RCN). Our team consists besides me of Marcos Flores (PD), Álvaro Parra (PD), Halvor Melkild (PhD cand.), Tim-Leon Klocke (PhD cand.), Anton Brekke (MSc), Sander Sandvik (MSc cand.) and Edvard Aasen (MSc cand.). Former members include Anastasia Sokolenko (now in Washington), Francesca Calore (now at LAPTh, Annecy), Andrzej Hryczuk (now at NCBJ, Warsaw), Mitsuru Kakizaki (now in Toyama), and Martin Vollmann (now in Tübingen). Marcos currently organizes the semi-regular Theory seminars here at the Physics Department - so let him know if you want to visit us (or contribute as local speaker) !
Academic history
- 14 – : Professor, UiO
- 13 – 14 : Associate Professor, UiO
- 09 – 13 : Emmy Noether-group leader, University of Hamburg
- 07 – 09 : Associate researcher, OKC (Stockholm)
- 05 – 07 : Postdoc, SISSA (Trieste)
- 02 – 05 : PhD, University of Stockholm
- 95 – 01 : Diploma, Universities of Konstanz, Tromsø and Freiburg
Awards
- 2026 : Frontier of Science Award
- 2025 : Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award
- 2024 : Selected as APS outstanding referee
Teaching
- Current courses at UiO
- more...
