TAPIR Seminar

In person: 370 Cahill. To Join via Zoom: 864 8902 5566

ABSTRACT: Over the next decade, new facilities including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will discover hundreds of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies and thousands of strong gravitational lenses. I will describe a research program to interpret these observations in the context of the galaxy--halo connection and fundamental dark matter properties. Excitingly, I will show that combining Rubin and Roman dwarf galaxy populations with JWST strong-lensing data will probe completely dark halos for the first time. I will present new cosmological simulation suites beyond the cold dark matter paradigm, including self-interacting dark matter simulations that address current lensing anomalies, to facilitate this effort. Thus, upcoming small-scale structure measurements will test unexplored dark matter and galaxy formation physics.