Faculty Lecture: Uncovering the Nature of Dark Matter

Derek F. Jackson Kimball, Professor of Physics
March 15, 2018
12:00 pm
Biella Room (LI 2126)

Over 80% of the mass in the universe is made up of an invisible substance known as dark matter. Evidence of dark matter's gravitational pull on stars and galaxies has been found by a wide variety of astrophysical observations. But what exactly is dark matter? This is a complete mystery. There are a number of interesting hypotheses that are being tested by experiments throughout the world.

Cal State East Bay is leading two different international collaborations to test if dark matter might be made of particles known as axions. In the Cosmic Axion Spin Precession Experiment (CASPEr), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques are being used to search for oscillating dipoles induced by an axion dark matter field. The Global Network of Optical Magnetometers to search for Exotic physics (GNOME) is a worldwide array of atomic magnetometers that searches for transient signals that would be generated if the Earth passed through an invisible axion "wall" or "star." We will report on initial results from both experiments.