Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
Investigating the Nature of Dark Matter with Strong Gravitational Lensing
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
Investigating the Nature of Dark Matter with Strong Gravitational Lensing
Do you wish to request the book?
Investigating the Nature of Dark Matter with Strong Gravitational Lensing
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Dissertation
Investigating the Nature of Dark Matter with Strong Gravitational Lensing
2020
Overview
Dark matter makes up most of the mass in the Universe, and yet its particle nature remains unknown. Structure formation arguments provide a promising avenue to address this confounding mystery, as the mass and formation mechanism of the dark matter manifests in the abundance and density profiles of dark matter halos. Measurements of the halo mass function and the mass-concentration relation can therefore be cast as direct constraints on the particle nature of dark matter itself.Strong gravitational lensing by galaxies offers a unique probe of dark matter structure across cosmological distance, circumventing the use of luminous matter to trace the underlying dark matter. Observables from strong lens systems, particularly the image magnifications in quadruply-imaged quasars, probe the halo mass function directly on sub-galactic scales, below 108 solar masses. In this low-mass regime, where halos become devoid of stars and gas, various dark matter models make unique predictions that lensing can constrain.In this dissertation, I present the development and implementation of a forward modeling framework that constrains any model based on dark matter theory, provided the model predicts the form of the halo mass function, and the density profile of individual halos. Using the framework I developed, my thesis presents an unprecedented constraint on the free-streaming length of dark matter that corresponds to a lower limit of 5.2keV on the mass of a thermal relic dark matter particle. In addition, I present the first constraint on the mass-concentration relation of Cold Dark Matter halos on sub-galactic scales across cosmological distance. The flexibility of the framework I developed broadens the scope of strong-lensing analyses to any structure formation model based on dark matter theory, underscoring the power of strong gravitational lensing as a probe of fundamental physics.
