Simon Fraser University
SFU Cosmology Seminars

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Tuesday, 3 December 2019, 14:30 in P8445B

Prof. Ludovic Van Waerbeke (UBC)

Axion Quark Nuggets: a candidate for baryonic, cold and strongly interacting dark matter

Let's assume dark matter is a particle. The DM theories currently tested, WIMPs-like, either via direct or indirect detection, cover only a tiny range of the allowed DM parameters space, and have not been particularly successful so far. A new DM candidate, the Axion Quark Nugget (AQN), has been proposed by Zhitnitsky in 2003, partly inspired by the quark nuggets (Witten 1984). In the AQN model, DM particles are very massive (gram mass or more) and interact very rarely, but very strongly, with the baryonic sector. They behave as cold dark matter, but they can induce various electromagnetic signals under certain conditions, without violating nucleosynthesis or any known Big Bang fundamental constraints. In this talk I will review the basic properties of the model and discuss some of our ongoing research projects at UBC in order to test the model. This requires a very interdisciplinary approach, by looking at how AQNs interact with planets, stellar atmospheres, compact objects, and up to the largest cosmological scales. This makes AQN a highly testable DM model, with potential for direct detection, unlike most currently popular WIMPs alternatives.

Seminars in 2019:

2019-09-10 14:30 in P8445B - Gabor Kunstatter (University of Winnipeg/SFU): What can quantum gravity tell us about the beginning and end of time?
2019-09-17 14:30 in P8445B - Andrei Frolov (SFU): Dust is everywhere
2019-10-08 14:30 in P8445B - Douglas Scott (UBC): Evaporating evidence for Hawking points
2019-10-22 14:30 in P8445B - Arif Babul (UVic): Cosmology with galaxy clusters
2019-11-19 14:30 in P8445B - Richard Shaw (UBC): Probing Dark Energy with CHIME
2019-11-26 14:30 in P8445B - Joanna Woo (SFU): Primer on machine learning for astronomy
2019-12-03 14:30 in P8445B - Ludovic Van Waerbeke (UBC): Axion Quark Nuggets: a candidate for baryonic, cold and strongly interacting dark matter
2020-01-20 15:00 in P8445B - Francesc Ferrer (Washington University): Gravitational wave signals of early universe axion dynamics
2020-02-14 14:30 in C9000 - Katie Mack (North Carolina State University): Dark matter: a cosmological perspective (physics colloquium)
2020-02-26 14:30 in P8445B - Paul Wiegert (University of Western Ontario): Interstellar asteroids and comets: what are they and where do they come from?
2020-02-28 14:30 in C9000 - Sara Ellison (University of Victoria): Clash of the Titans: Galaxy mergers in the nearby Universe (physics colloquium)
2020-05-12 12:00 in Zoom - Levon Pogosian (SFU): Relieving the Hubble tension with primordial magnetic fields
2020-05-19 12:00 in Zoom - José Tomas Gálvez Ghersi (University of Mississippi): Numerical renormalization group-based approach to secular perturbation theory
2020-06-02 12:00 in Zoom - Leo Stein (University of Mississippi): Gravitational-wave tests of GR with simulations of beyond-GR theories
2020-06-16 12:00 in Zoom - Andrei Frolov (Simon Fraser Univeristy): Primordial non-Gaussianity from preheating
2020-07-02 14:30 in Zoom - Jack Gegenberg (University of New Brunswick): Collapse of a rotating shell in 3+1 dimensions (special seminar)
2020-07-07 12:00 in Zoom - Joanna Woo (Simon Fraser Univeristy): Machine learning as a tool for astrophysics
2020-07-28 12:00 in Zoom - José Tomas Gálvez Ghersi (University of Mississippi): A fixed point for black hole distributions

[ See complete seminar archives | iCal feed ]

Modified by Andrei Frolov <frolov@sfu.ca> on 2023-11-01