Shedding new light on dark matter




A group of physicists has created a method for forecasting the make-up of dark matter, an unseen kind of stuff that can only be discovered by its gravitational attraction on other forms of matter and whose existence has long been sought for by researchers.

Its research, which was published in the journal Physical Review Letters, focuses on forecasting "cosmological fingerprints" for dark matter models whose masses fall between those of the electron and the proton. Similar signs have been expected by earlier techniques for more basic dark matter theories. The authors of the publication point out that this discovery introduces new techniques for locating these signs in more intricate models, which investigations continue to look for.

Cara Giovanetti, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics at New York University and the paper's primary author, believes that research on this enigmatic sort of matter is not limited to searches for it.

Giovanetti continues, outlining the technique outlined in the Physical Review Letters paper, "Precision measurements of different parameters of the universe — for example, the amount of helium in the universe, or the temperatures of different particles in the early universe — can also teach us a lot about dark matter.

Giovanetti and her co-authors' study, which they co-authored with Princeton physicist Mariangela Lisanti, NYU postdoctoral fellow Hongwan Liu, NYU associate professor Joshua Ruderman, and Princeton physicist Hongwan Liu, focused on the process known as big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), which produces light forms of matter like helium, hydrogen, and lithium. Each of these components will develop differently depending on the existence of dark matter. The cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is electromagnetic radiation produced by the collision of protons and electrons, is also essential to understanding these occurrences.

By developing models that considered both BBN and CMB, the researchers hoped to find a way to detect the presence of a particular kind of dark matter — that with a mass between that of the electron and the proton.

Giovanetti says that by altering how rapidly the universe expands, "such dark matter might vary the abundances of specific elements created in the early cosmos and leave an impression in the cosmic microwave background."

The team's findings included predictions of cosmic fingerprints connected to certain types of dark matter. These signals are the result of dark matter affecting various particle temperatures or the rate at which the cosmos expands.

Their findings demonstrated that too-light dark matter will produce differing amounts of light elements than what astronomical measurements can detect.

Giovanetti outlines one possibility: "Lighter types of dark matter may cause the cosmos to expand so quickly that these components don't have a chance to exist."

Our study teaches us that some dark matter theories can't have too tiny of a mass because then the universe wouldn't look like the one we see, she continues.


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Materials provided by New York University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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