Monday Colloquium: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (University of New Hampshire) "Large Scale Structure from Microphysics"

In this talk, I will describe my efforts to understand the nature of the mysterious dark matter. I provide an overview of the general problem and then describe my current approach to it, which is to characterize the behavior of a proposed dark matter particle, the axion. I will give some insight into how I am using a range of tools -- model building, computation, and high energy astrophysics -- to get at the basic question of “what is the statistical mechanics of axion dark matter?” I will discuss work that shows that the self-interaction should not be ignored and that the sign of the interaction makes a significant difference in the evolution of the system, both for QCD axions and fuzzy dark matter.