Dark Matter

The Dark Matter Group works to understand the nature of dark matter through its gravitational effects on baryonic matter across the Universe. It has been nearly a century since Zwicky first spotted hints of "missing matter" in the motions of galaxies in the Coma Cluster, yet the nature of dark matter remains one of the biggest unsolved puzzles in modern physics.

We use stellar streams as sensitive tracers of dark matter halos and substructure, combining theory, simulations, and model-to-data comparisons with observations from Euclid and Rubin/LSST and upcoming data from the Roman Space Telescope and ARRAKIHS.

Beyond stellar streams, we are looking to broaden our approach to include large-scale structure, the connection between dark matter and early galaxy formation, and the assembly history of the Milky Way as complementary windows into dark matter physics. We are also developing connections to X-ray observations and aim to build ties across groups within the A&A section.