Dark Matter Signals Through Cosmic History

Dark matter constitutes more than 5/6 of the matter in the universe, but its nature and interactions remain one of the great puzzles of fundamental physics. Dark matter collisions or decays have the potential to produce high-energy particles; such particles may already have reshaped the history of our cosmos, leaving traces of their existence in ionization and heating of the intergalactic medium, in background radiation from the cosmic dark ages and the epoch of reionization, and in signals from our own Milky Way galaxy. I will describe new and improved tools to map out possible non-gravitational cosmic signatures of dark matter, for models ranging from light particle DM to primordial black holes, and discuss current constraints and plans for future directions.

Host: Wei Xue