Institute Lecture – Prof. Tracy Slatyer

Speaker:
Prof. Tracy Slatyer
Satish Dhawan Visiting Chair Professor, CHEP, IISc
MIT Department of Physics, Cambridge, United States

Title: Searching for Dark Matter with the Universe’s Highest-Energy Light
Abstract:
      Gamma rays, with frequencies billions of times higher than visible light, provide a window on extremely energetic astrophysical processes occurring in our Milky Way Galaxy and beyond. At the same time, the mysterious dark matter of the universe could imprint a range of clues to its existence in the gamma-ray sky. Disentangling the two isn’t always easy, but I will discuss how physicists try to distinguish possible dark matter signals from high-energy astrophysics, what we are currently seeing in the data, and what new clues the next generation of gamma-ray telescopes are expected to provide.