Probing the Particle Nature of Dark Matter with Strong Gravitational Lensing

暗物质的性质仍然是宇宙学中最重要的悬而未决的问题之一，有可能揭示粒子物理学标准模型之外的基础物理学，从而使我们对自然世界的理解发生巨大的飞跃。众所周知，暗物质粒子的微观物理在不同尺度上影响其聚集特性。最广泛接受的暗物质模型，冷暗物质，在解释宇宙的大尺度结构方面取得了巨大的成功。然而，它在预测小的亚星系尺度上的物质分布方面面临着许多挑战，一些观测似乎倾向于温暖的暗物质替代品。这个问题的确切答案只能通过用纯引力探测器在小尺度上绘制暗物质的分布来实现。强引力透镜-由于干涉结构的引力使光线偏转而形成的远距离源的多个图像-是唯一能够在宇宙学距离上做到这一点的探测器。拟议研究计划的目标是利用引力透镜、世界上最强大的望远镜和人工智能来量化遥远星系中暗物质晕的丰度，以测量暗物质粒子的温度。

The nature of dark matter remains one of the most important outstanding questions in cosmology, with the potential to reveal fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, resulting in giant leaps in our understanding of the natural world. It is well understood that the microphysics of the dark matter particle impacts its clustering properties on different scales. The most widely accepted dark matter model, cold dark matter, has had tremendous success explaining the large-scale structure of the universe. However, it has faced many challenges for its predictions of the distribution of matter on small, sub-galactic scales, with some observations seemingly favoring a warm dark matter alternative. A definitive answer to this question can only be achieved by mapping the distribution of dark matter on small scales with a purely gravitational probe. Strong gravitational lensing - the formation of multiple images of distant sources due to the deflection of their light rays by the gravity of intervening structures - is the only probe capable of doing this at cosmological distances. The goal of the proposed research program is to use gravitational lensing, world's most powerful telescopes, and artificial intelligence to quantify the abundance of dark matter subhalos in distant galaxies to measure the temperature of the dark matter particle.