Investigations on the Nature of Dark Matter

该奖项资助了犹他大学Paolo Gondolo教授的研究。这项研究的核心问题是暗物质的本质。暗物质是一种神秘的物质，用来解释星系中气体和恒星的运动，星系团中的引力，以及早期宇宙中观测到的小块星系的形成。现在已经确定暗物质不可能由任何已知的粒子构成。关于暗物质作为一种新的基本粒子存在着许多理论观点，人们正在进行许多实验来验证这些理论。Gondolo教授的小组研究了其中一些理论，目的是了解它们的有效性和测试方法，同时为科学界提供可公开获取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，并将成为经验基础，证明构成人类的物质只是宇宙的一小部分。从技术上讲，该奖项资助的研究通过(1)为粒子暗物质界提供最先进和用户友好的软件工具，用于计算宇宙密度和来自弱相互作用大质量粒子的一般模型的直接和间接信号，(2)评估银河系宇宙射线通量预测中的核物理不确定性，作为间接探测暗物质粒子的背景。(3)为直接暗物质探测数据的天体物理学独立分析提供适当的统计意义；(4)统一和完善一般暗物质的原子核散射理论。该奖项的教育部分在当地博物馆和当地学校继续了一项非常成功的物理推广计划，旨在以有趣，充满活力和参与的方式吸引年轻学生参与科学，从而最终增加负责任的公民和领导者的数量，他们可以用基本的科学知识解决我们这个时代的重大问题。

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.