Investigations on the Nature of Dark Matter

该奖项资助了犹他州大学的Paolo Gondolo教授的研究。研究中解决的中心问题是暗物质的性质，这是一种神秘的物质，用于解释星系中气体和恒星的测量运动，星系团中的引力，以及早期宇宙中观察到的微小团块的星系形成。到目前为止，已经确定暗物质不能由任何已知的粒子组成。对于暗物质作为一种新的基本粒子，存在许多理论观点，并且正在进行许多实验来测试这些理论。Gondolo教授的小组研究了其中的一些理论，目的是了解它们的有效性和测试方法，同时为科学界提供公开的理论和实验评估工具。暗物质粒子的发现，从而直接证实了暗物质的存在，将是哥白尼革命的完成，也将是构成人类的物质只是宇宙中少数成分的经验基础。从技术上讲，该奖项资助的研究解决了暗物质的性质问题，通过（1）提供最先进的和用户，粒子暗物质社区的友好软件工具，用于计算宇宙密度以及来自弱相互作用大质量粒子通用模型的直接和间接信号，（2）评估在预测银河宇宙线通量时作为间接探测暗物质粒子背景的核物理不确定性，（3）为与天体物理无关的直接暗物质探测数据的分析提供适当的统计意义;（4）统一和完善一般暗物质散射原子核的理论。该奖项的教育部分延续了当地博物馆和当地学校非常成功的物理学推广计划，旨在以有趣，充满活力和引人入胜的方式吸引年轻学生参与科学，以最终增加负责任的公民和领导者的数量，他们可以用科学的基本知识解决我们时代的重大问题。

This award funds the research of Professor Paolo Gondolo at the University of Utah. The central question addressed in the research is the nature of dark matter, a mysterious substance introduced to explain the measured motion of gas and stars in galaxies, the gravitational force in galaxy clusters, and the formation of galaxies out of the tiny lumps observed in the early universe. It has by now been established that dark matter cannot be made of any known particles. Many theoretical ideas exist for dark matter as a new elementary particle, and many experiments are being performed to test these theories. Professor Gondolo's group studies some of these theories, with the aim of understanding their validity and the ways to test them, and at the same time providing the science community with publicly-accessible assessment tools of theories and experiments. The discovery of dark matter particles, and therefore the direct confirmation of the existence of dark matter, would be a completion of the Copernican revolution, and would be the empirical foundation that the material substance humans are made of is only a minority component of the universe.Technically, the research funded by this award addresses the question of the nature of dark matter by (1) providing state-of-the-art and user-friendly software tools to the particle dark matter community for the computation of cosmic densities and direct and indirect signals from generic models of weakly-interacting massive particles, (2) assess the nuclear physics uncertainties in the predictions of galactic cosmic ray fluxes as backgrounds to the indirect detection of dark matter particles, (3) supply proper statistical meaning to astrophysics-independent analyses of direct dark matter detection data, and (4) unify and complete the theory of generic dark matter scattering off atomic nuclei. The educational component of this award continues a very successful physics outreach program at the local museum and in local schools, seeking to attract young students to science in a fun, energetic, and engaging way so as to ultimately increase the number of responsible citizens and leaders who can address the major issues of our time with basic knowledge of science.