PhD projects: Dark matter, from the early Universe to the Milky Way
Understanding the nature of dark matter (DM) is one of the main outstanding problems of both astronomy and particle physics. Particle Physics provides us with various well motivated DM candidates, such as WIMPs, axions and Primordial Black Holes (PBHs). To detect dark matter we need to understand how it's distributed, which depends on the formation and evolution of the first dark matter structures. There are various potential PhD projects available in this area, involving varying mixtures of theory/data-comparison, analytic/numerical calculations and astro/particle physics.
For instance
- What does data from the GAIA satellite tell us about the local DM distribution?
- How to axion mini-clusters evolve and what are the resulting experimental signatures in lab experiments and gravitational lensing observations?
- What is the mass function of PBHs and how do they cluster?
Details of how to apply can be found on the Particle Cosmology group Applications page.