Unveiling the nature of dark matter with small-scale cosmic structure

Cosmological and astrophysical measurements provide clear evidence for the existence of dark matter, and in recent years they have started to map dark matter over large volumes of the cosmos - but we still do not know the mass or interaction properties of the dark matter particle(s?). I will describe how measurements of small-scale cosmic structure - including dwarf galaxies, gravitational lenses, and the properties of stellar streams - are providing insight into the microphysical properties of dark matter. Large photometric and spectroscopic surveys coming online in the near future will accelerate this search in a way that is complementary to other dark matter probes, and have the potential to detect truly dark halos below the limit of galaxy formation and confirm or rule out a key prediction of our standard cosmological model.

Speaker: Risa Wechsler, Stanford University and KAVLI