Dark Matter on the Smallest Scales

该奖项资助了北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的Adrienne Erickcek教授的研究活动。组成元素周期表上所有元素的质子、中子和电子只占宇宙物质的不到16%。剩下的84%的物质的组成是物理学中悬而未决的主要问题之一。作为该奖项的一部分，Erickcek教授将研究如何利用最小的暗物质结构来理解暗物质的组成和起源。这个项目通过它将产生的知识和它将为本科生和研究生提供的培训来促进科学的进步，从而符合国家利益。这个项目也将产生更广泛的影响。Erickcek教授将继续通过她与莫尔黑德天文馆和科学中心合作设计的“如何给星系称重”课程，向高中物理学生展示暗物质的奥秘。她还将通过公开演讲分享更广泛地了解暗物质的探索。从技术上讲，最小的暗物质结构的大小取决于暗物质的起源，它们的丰富程度提供了宇宙在最初十分之一秒内膨胀历史的信息。如果暗物质是通过对产生产生的，那么在最小暗物质团块的密集中心内的暗物质湮灭可能最终提供暗物质存在的非引力特征。根据该奖项，Erickcek教授将扩展其团队开发的计算最小光晕内暗物质湮灭率的方法的范围并提高其准确性，从而对热暗物质的产生产生更强大的限制。她还将探索千帕秒尺度密度波动的观测如何约束暗物质的非热生成。最后，该奖项将支持Erickcek教授对物质功率谱与暗物质粒子速度色散之间关系的研究，该研究旨在提高我们利用小尺度结构观测来了解暗物质粒子基本特性的能力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award funds the research activities of Professor Adrienne Erickcek at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.The protons, neutrons, and electrons that compose all the elements on the periodic table account for less than sixteen percent of the matter in the Universe. The composition of the remaining eighty-four percent of matter is one of the major outstanding questions in physics. As part of this award, Professor Erickcek will investigate how the smallest dark-matter structures can be used to understand the composition and origins of dark matter. This project serves the national interest by promoting the progress of science through both the knowledge it will generate and the training it will provide undergraduate and graduate students. This project will have broader impacts as well. Professor Erickcek will continue to expose high-school physics students to the mystery of dark matter using the "How Do You Weigh a Galaxy?" curriculum that she designed in partnership with the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. She will also share the quest to understand dark matter more widely by giving public lectures.More technically, the size of the smallest dark-matter structures depends on the origins of dark matter, and their abundance provides information about the expansion history of the Universe during its first tenth of a second. If dark matter was produced through pair production, then dark-matter annihilations within the dense centers of the smallest dark-matter clumps may finally provide a non-gravitational signature of the existence of dark matter. Under this award, Professor Erickcek will extend the scope and improve the accuracy of the method her team has developed to calculate the dark-matter annihilation rate within the smallest halos, leading to more robust constraints on thermal dark-matter production. She will also explore how observations of kiloparsec-scale density fluctuations constrain the non-thermal creation of dark matter. Finally, this award will support Professor Erickcek's investigation of the connection between the matter power spectrum and the velocity dispersion of the dark-matter particles, which aims to improve our ability to use observations of small-scale structure to learn about the fundamental properties of the dark-matter particle.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.