Integrated Calendar

Astrophysical phenomena play a definitive role in our understanding of fundamental particle physics, and vice-verse.
I will present two lines of research, showcasing the interplay between particle physics theory and astrophysics.

In the first half of the talk, I will show how the viable parameter space for dark matter can be established using gravity alone.
At the lowest end of the possible range for the dark matter particle mass, the de Broglie wavelength of ultralight dark matter (ULDM) attains astronomical scales. The ensuing wave mechanics phenomena can be tested observationally in a variety of astrophysical systems. I will describe a search for the imprint of ULDM on the gas kinematics of low-surface-brightness galaxies, leading to an absolute lower bound on the mass of dark matter. A host of other systems, ranging from supermassive black holes to gravitational lensing, offer promising means to advance the search for ULDM by orders of magnitude.

In the second half of the talk, I will show how an analysis of cosmic ray antimatter — long considered a smoking gun for dark matter in the TeV range — has taken a surprising turn, leading us to new theoretical insights on the problem of the origin of loosely-bound nuclei in hadronic collisions (sometimes referred to as ``Snowballs in Hell”). The resulting research programme, now explored at the Large Hadron Collider, offers a bridge between two-particle correlation analyses to the study of nuclear clusters.