Three ways to shine light on dark matter
Speaker: Tongyan Lin, UC San Diego
Time: 2:00 p.m., Friday, April 26 (refreshments served at 1:45 p.m.)
Place: P-148
Abstract: Dark matter is the dominant form of matter in the universe, and it has been observed through its gravitational pull on stars and galaxies. A big open question is how to describe the fundamental particle physics underlying dark matter. I will describe one hypothesis: dark matter is a particle with very small electric charge. I will describe the journey of this dark matter particle, from its creation in the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, to its interactions when the universe was ~380,000 years old and the microwave background light was being formed, and finally a peek into the future when such a dark matter particle could scatter off a crystal target in proposed experiments.