RII Track-4:NSF: Probing the Dark Sector through Telescopes

在过去的三十年里，用强大的望远镜对夜空的详细观测揭示了一些物理现象，这些现象对宇宙的演化似乎非常重要，但在地球上的实验室里却从未被观察到。其中一种现象就是暗物质的存在，这是宇宙的一种神秘成分，其含量大约是我们日常生活中所熟悉物质的五倍。它的基本性质仍然是粒子物理学和宇宙学中最重要的问题之一。作为夜空中暗物质占主导地位的物体，环绕银河系的小型卫星星系是研究其性质的理想实验室。这项研究基础设施改善轨道4 EPSCoR研究人员项目将为新墨西哥大学的一名助理教授提供奖学金，并为一名研究生提供培训。这项工作将与加州大学欧文分校的研究人员合作进行。该项目将允许PI在两次访问加州大学欧文分校期间获得关键的专业知识。作为该奖项的一部分，加州大学欧文分校的共同主持人将访问新墨西哥大学，举行座谈会和公开演讲，为我们当地的研究生提供交流机会。私家侦探还将在欧文市发表公开演讲，分享他对暗物质奥秘的专业知识。作为该奖项的一部分，将为研究生提供劳动力培训。研究人员将利用对银河系卫星的详细观测来探索暗物质的基本特性。由于这些小型卫星星系位于我们可以直接探测到的一些质量最小的暗物质晕内，因此它们是测试标准冷暗物质预测是否一直延伸到这些微小尺度的理想实验室。在两次对加州大学欧文分校的长期访问中，PI和研究生将与那里的粒子天体物理学家专家合作，建立必要的数值基础设施，以预测暗物质物理对观测到的银河系卫星特性的影响。项目分析将集中在两个关键特性上，这可能表明与冷暗物质情景的偏差：在最小尺度上抑制结构，以及在这些卫星周围的小光晕内存在重要的暗物质自相互作用。有了正演模型，研究人员将利用目前对银河系卫星的观测来约束这两个关键特性，并首次以这种精度测试暗物质在这些尺度上是否真的是冷的和无碰撞的。我们最终将对维拉鲁宾天文台的未来数据能够对这些限制做出哪些贡献进行预测。该项目的结果有可能导致迄今为止最全面的图像，即银河系卫星的数量可以告诉我们关于暗物质的物理特性。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。

In the last three decades, detailed observations of the night sky with powerful telescopes have revealed physical phenomena that appear extremely important for the evolution of the cosmos but have never been observed in the laboratory here on Earth. One such phenomenon is the existence of dark matter, a mysterious constituent of the Universe that is about five times as abundant as the matter familiar to us in our everyday life. Its fundamental nature remains one of the most important questions in particle physics and cosmology. As some of the most dark-matter-dominated objects in the night sky, small satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way galaxy are ideal laboratories to study its properties. This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 EPSCoR Research Fellows project will provide a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. This work will be conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Irvine. The project will allow the PI to gain critical expertise during two visits at the University of California, Irvine. As part of this award, the co-hosts from UC Irvine will come visit the University of New Mexico to give colloquia and public talks, providing a networking opportunity to our local graduate students. The PI will also share his expertise about the mysteries of dark matter by giving a public talk in Irvine. Workforce training will be provided to a graduate student as part of this award.Researchers will use detailed observations of the Milky Way satellites to explore the fundamental properties of dark matter. Since these small satellite galaxies reside within some of the least massive dark matter halos that we can directly probe, they are ideal laboratory for testing whether the standard cold dark matter predictions extend all the way to these tiny scales. During two extended visits to the University of California, Irvine, the PI and graduate student will collaborate with expert particle astrophysicists there to build the necessary numerical infrastructure to forward-model the impact of dark matter physics on the observed properties of the Milky Way satellites. Project analysis will focus on two key properties that could indicate a deviation from the cold dark matter scenario: a suppression of structure at the smallest scales and the presence of significant dark matter self-interaction within the small halos surrounding these satellites. With the forward model in hand, researchers will use current observations of the Milky Way satellites to constrain these two key properties and test, for the first time with this level of precision, whether dark matter is really cold and collisionless at these scales. We will finally perform forecast for what future data from the Vera Rubin Observatory will be able to contribute to these constraints. Project outcomes have potential to lead to the most thorough picture to date of what the population of Milky Way satellites can tell us about the physics of dark matter.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.