Theoretical Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology

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The intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology is an exciting anddata-driven field, where a combination of imaginative basic theory and observations hasrevolutionized our understanding of the Universe. The PI?s research focuses on severalareas where the potential for new fundamental discoveries is particularly high: DarkMatter, Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays, and Galactic and Cosmic Magnetic Fields.Although Dark Matter (DM) is conventionally considered to be an as-yet-undiscoveredparticle arising in some extension of standard particle physics, instead, DM may be amanifestation of an entirely new world ? possibly as complex as our own ? whoseproperties we can only infer through gravity. For instance, if our world is a brane in ahigher dimensional space, there could be other branes nearby in some new dimension,whose presence we could only discover through their gravitational effects.Although still inconclusive, evidence has been mounting that Dark Matter may have along range interaction with itself, which the PI has recently shown would be a smokinggun for a disconnected Dark Sector. The PI, her collaborators and her students willextend simulations of cosmological structure formation and of the tidal stripping of dwarfgalaxies bound to the Milky Way, to include the possibility of new forces in the DarkSector. Detailed comparison with these and other observations will either show thepresence of a new force and allow some properties of the Dark Sector to be inferred, orwill put stringent limits on Dark Sector interactions. Related questions that will beinvestigated are: Do dark matter and dark energy interact with each other? Why is theabundance of dark matter about equal to that of ordinary matter?Another important topic of research is the highest energy particles in Nature ? ultrahighenergy cosmic rays (UHECRs). The aim is to pin down what they are, and how andwhere in the Universe they are accelerated or created. The third main effort is to mapout the Galactic Magnetic Field with much greater accuracy than ever before, by makinga combined fit of many different types of observations.The PI is involved in an international collaboration to develop state-of-the-art techniquesfor optimizing fits involving many parameters and hundreds of millions of measured datapoints. The PI intends to take the New York Schools Cosmic Particle Telescope(NYSCPT) project to the next stage of its successful partnership withNYC schools by prototyping rooftop water tank detectors and designing a full-sized ThePI is involved in mentoring high school students, teacher and student participants ofNYSCPT, women graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty. She isalso a founding participant of the NYU ?WINS? program to foster undergraduatewomen?s participation in science.