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Testing decaying dark matter with the cosmic background radiation and the first stars

Colloquium

Theoretical Physics, general interest

Speaker:

Tracy Slatyer

Institution:

MIT

Location&Place:

IFT Seminar Room/Red Room

Abstract:

84% of the matter in the universe is "dark", presently invisible to us except through its gravitational interactions. However, even a tiny fraction of dark matter decaying or annihilating into visible particles could have striking effects on the primordial history of our universe. I will describe how these effects could manifest in distortions to cosmic radiation backgrounds, and present a new analysis indicating that they could also modify the time of formation of the first stars.