Rutgers University Department of Physics and Astronomy

Annika Peter
(Ohio State University)

Title: Return of dark-matter self-interactions?

Abstract: Models of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM)—models in which dark matter can have up to strong-scale interactions with like particles in a hidden sector—had their first heyday in the early 2000's, to explain the dearth of small galaxies near our Milky Way. In this talk, I will explore why these models fell out of favor for a decade, and why they've come roaring back since ~2010. I will show how small galaxies near the Milky Way can probe a new type of cosmic SIDM phenomenology, and how other observations on small scales can map out the allowed regions of SIDM parameter space.

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