New Probes of Dark Matter and the Early Universe

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

AST 0098557 Hogan, Craig J. The natural laboratory of the early universe provided more extreme environments for a much longer time than we can ever come close to attaining in artificial laboratories. In this project, Theoretical studies will be performed to connect predicted astrophysical relics of the early universe with observational data. One form of relic is the Dark Matter that provides most of the attractive gravity binding galaxies together. In one part of the project, mathematical modeling will show how observations of the structure of galaxies can reveal the properties of the exotic Dark Matter particles they are made of, and their history of formation and clustering since the early Big Bang. In another part of the project, cosmological sources of gravitational waves will be studied. These vibrations in the fabric of space-time will probably be detected for the first time during the next decade. They are much more penetrating than light or any other kind of energy; every violent event that has ever happened in the history of the universe has left behind a faint reverberation that still echoes today. We will calculate the character of detectable gravitational wave signals that might have been produced during the formation of our three-dimensional space out of the true fundamental space, which is now thought to have many more dimensions. The aim is to learn about the fundamental properties of how space and energy are put together. Funding for this project was provided by the NSF program for Extragalactic Astronomy & Cosmology (AST/EXC). ***