ABSTRACT
Dark matter makes up about 85% of the matter in the Universe. Understanding its nature is one of the most important physics endeavors. Like ordinary particles in the Standard Model, dark matter can be part of the dark sectors consisting of a plethora of hidden particles with new interactions. These new particles and interactions may modify the formation and evolution of various structures in the Universe. Therefore, astrophysical observations can provide us with important information on the nature of dark matter and dark sectors. In this talk, I will focus on the impact of dark matter self-interactions, a ubiquitous phenomenon in the dark sector paradigm, on the dynamics of the dark matter halos. Self-interacting dark matter halo experiences the gravothermal evolution: the central halo first develops a core but ultimately collapses. The presence of the collapsed phase greatly diversifies the density distributions of dark matter halos. It leaves unique imprints in observations, such as the rotation curves, for near-field dwarf galaxies and low-surface-brightness galaxies, with which we probed dissipative dark matter self-interactions. It also provides a new mechanism to seed the supermassive black holes that have been observed within the first billion years since the Big Bang, whose origin remains a puzzle in astrophysics.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Zhong is a KICP fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. at C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University in 2016. He was then a postdoc at Boston University before moving to Chicago. His research area is in the intersection of theoretical particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. He is interested in the search for particle dark matter, and other new physics through astrophysical observations and terrestrial experiments.
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