UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Thesis Proposal Presentation

Sten Delos, UNC Chapel Hill

“Probing the early universe using dark matter minihalos”

Small-scale fluctuations in the density of visible matter were washed out by photon diffusion while the Universe was still opaque, shutting a valuable window into the physics of the hot early Universe. However, these fluctuations survive in the dark matter sector. Many inflationary models predict an enhancement to small-scale fluctuations, as do certain well motivated pictures of the post-inflationary thermal history. If small-scale fluctuations are enhanced, this would lead to an abundance of highly dense collapsed dark matter microstructures that could be visible from their gamma-ray signal or by gravitational lensing effects. My dissertation work focuses on understanding the processes that shape these dark matter structures with the aim of using observational data to place robust constraints on the physics of the early Universe.