Dark Matter on the Smallest Scales

该奖项资助了查佩尔山的北卡罗来纳州大学的艾德里安娜·埃里克切克教授的研究活动。构成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百分之十六。剩下的84%的物质的组成是物理学中最重要的悬而未决的问题之一。 作为该奖项的一部分，Erickcek教授将研究如何使用最小的暗物质结构来理解暗物质的组成和起源。该项目通过促进科学的进步，通过它将产生的知识和培训，它将提供本科生和研究生的国家利益。该项目也将产生更广泛的影响。Erickcek教授将继续通过“如何称银河系的重量？”向高中物理学生揭示暗物质的奥秘。她与莫尔黑德天文馆和科学中心合作设计的课程。她还将通过公开讲座分享更广泛地了解暗物质的探索。更技术性地说，最小暗物质结构的大小取决于暗物质的起源，它们的丰度提供了宇宙在前十分之一秒膨胀历史的信息。如果暗物质是通过电子对产生的，那么在最小暗物质团的致密中心内的暗物质湮灭可能最终提供了暗物质存在的非引力特征。根据该奖项，Erickcek教授将扩大其团队开发的方法的范围并提高其准确性，以计算最小晕内的暗物质湮灭率，从而对热暗物质产生更强大的约束。她还将探索千秒差距尺度的密度波动的观测如何限制暗物质的非热创造。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联系的研究，它旨在提高我们利用小尺度结构的观测来了解黑暗的基本特性的能力，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的知识分子的支持。优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.