11:00 am–12:00 pm ERC 401
Annika Peter (Ohio State University) "Big news about dark matter from the centers of small galaxies"
In the absence of gas physics, the standard “cold dark matter” (CDM) paradigm makes two key predictions for the self-gravitating clouds of dark matter that we call halos. First, there should be a hierarchy of halos down to approximately Earth-mass scales. Second, the matter distribution within the halos follows a very specific power-law distribution. This talk focuses on the latter of these two predictions. I discuss possible deviations from the characteristic power law on account of galaxy physics and beyond-standard-model physics, in the space of theory and observations. I show recent results from my group and our collaborators on what we’ve learned about dark matter and galaxy evolution physics from small galaxies, even smaller galaxies, and halos that are too small to host galaxies.
