Ian Shoemaker (Penn State University)

Demystifying the Origin of Dark Matter

While very little is known about dark matter, its cosmological abundance is remarkably well-determined and curiously close to the abundance of ordinary matter. Moreover, there may be tentative indications from astronomical data that dark matter self-scatters at a sizeable rate. These clues point to a common solution and could indicate that dark matter interacts with a new force carrier. I will discuss the variety of ways in which this class of dark matter models can be tested in future observations, including: direct detection experiments, The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, and the Large Hadron Collider.

  Oct 20 at 4pm in Geo/Phys 407

  Link to slides.