Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter

5.0010.00

Presented on ZOOM 12th June @ 7pm

Primordial black holes as dark matter

Galaxies are like icebergs: the stars we can see are only a small fraction of what’s there. In fact the vast majority of the material in the Universe appears to be in the form of invisible and exotic so-called ‘dark matter’. The most popular dark matter candidates are new elementary particles, for instance WIMPs and axions. However there has been a recent surge of interest in another possibility, Primordial Black Holes, black holes formed in the early Universe, just after the Big Bang. After outlining the evidence for dark matter, I will describe how Primordial Black Holes can form and the current status of our attempts of find them.

 

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Presented on ZOOM 12th June at 7pm

 

ABOUT THE LECTURE:  

Primordial black holes as dark matter

Galaxies are like icebergs: the stars we can see are only a small fraction of what’s there. In fact the vast majority of the material in the Universe appears to be in the form of invisible and exotic so-called ‘dark matter’. The most popular dark matter candidates are new elementary particles, for instance WIMPs and axions. However there has been a recent surge of interest in another possibility, Primordial Black Holes, black holes formed in the early Universe, just after the Big Bang. After outlining the evidence for dark matter, I will describe how Primordial Black Holes can form and the current status of our attempts of find them.

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Prof. Anne Green

Prof. Anne Green is an astroparticle physicist at the University of Nottingham. She has a BA in Physics from the University of Oxford and a DPhil in early Universe cosmology from the University of Sussex. Her research interests lie at the interface between astrophysics and particle physics. The main focus of her current research is the search for dark matter, in particular the signals expected in experiments, and their dependence on the dark matter distribution. She is actively involved in various outreach activities ranging from schools talks to a Radio 4 In Our Time episode.