Yao-Yuan Mao (Rutgers University)

Fundamental Physics of Dark Matter from Dwarf Galaxy Surveys
 
A better understanding of the complex galaxy formation, in particular the co-evolution of galaxies and dark matter halos, will directly enable us to translate astrophysical observations into solid constraints on the physical properties of dark matter. I will describe recent advances in modeling this galaxy-halo co-evolution, and how these models, together with galaxy surveys, can jointly inform us about galaxy formation and dark matter physics. I will then turn the focus to the population of dwarf galaxies, which are abundant in number and rich in their dark components, serving an excellent probe of dark matter. I will show recent results from the SAGA Survey, a spectroscopic survey that searches for satellite dwarf galaxies in nearby Milky Way-like systems, and demonstrate how these results put our own Milky Way in a cosmological context and provide constraints on the galaxy-halo coevolution. Finally I will discuss how the technique and data from the SAGA Survey can be applied to ongoing and upcoming surveys, such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), enabling us to identify a much larger population of dwarf galaxies in coming years to reveal the fundamental physics of dark matter.