A new analysis by a team of physicists offers an innovative way to predict the signatures of dark matter.
A method for predicting the composition of dark matter has been developed by physicists.
The work that appears in the journal Physical Review Letters focuses on predicting "cosmological signatures" for dark matter with a mass between the electron and the protons. For simpler models of dark matter, previous methods had predicted the same signatures. The paper's authors say that this research establishes new ways to find these signatures in more complex models.
Experiments that look for dark matter are not the only way to learn about this mysterious type of matter, according to the lead author of the paper.
The method described in the Physical Review Letters paper can teach us a lot about dark matter.
The research was conducted with Joshua Ruderman, an associate professor in the Department of Physics at NYU, and Hongwan Liu, an NYU graduate student. There is invisible dark matter that affects how each element will form. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), generated by combining electrons and protons, is crucial to these phenomena.
The team wanted to be able to see the presence of a specific category of dark matter that had a mass between the electron and the protons.
The effects of dark matter can be seen in how quickly the universe expands.
The team made predictions about the existence of dark matter. Dark matter can change the temperatures of particles or how fast the universe expands.
Dark matter that is too light will cause different amounts of light elements.
One scenario is that light forms of dark matter might make the universe expand so quickly that the elements don't have a chance to form.
She says that some models of dark matter can't have a mass that's too small.
More information: Cara Giovanetti et al, Joint Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Light Dark Sectors with Dark Radiation, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.021302 Journal information: Physical Review Letters
All Rights Reserved © 2024
