Wave-like Dark Matter: Listening Through A Dark Matter Radio

May 08, 2023 - 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Location

Hewlett Teaching Center, Room 200 and online

Speaker
Dr. Maria Simanovskaia (KIPAC/Stanford)

 

Listening through a dark matter radio

The nature of dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries of the modern era. All the matter that we see makes up just one sixth of the total mass of the Universe – there’s five times as much again in this mysterious stuff we call ‘dark matter’. We know it’s there, but we know close to nothing about what it’s made of. Different people have proposed new particles and objects ranging from the very small – lighter than a single subatomic particle – to the very large - heavier even than the Sun. The lighter, wave-like and heavier, particle-like dark matter candidates, behave differently and require different strategies to detect. In this lecture, Dr. Maria Simanovskaia will discuss a particular, promising dark matter candidate called an ‘axion,’ which, if detected, would also explain why the neutron is missing an electric dipole moment. She will also introduce the DMRadio collaboration, a team she is part of to build the world’s most sensitive radio that interacts with axion dark matter. Dr. Simanovskaia will wrap up the lecture by discussing the requirements needed for detecting a weak dark matter signal and the current technology development for tackling these challenges.

Maria Simanovskaia

About the Speaker

Dr. Maria Simanovskaia is a postdoctoral scholar at KIPAC. She is excited to be working towards solving the mysteries of the Universe by leading the effort for DMRadio-50L, a cutting-edge axion dark matter detector as part of the DMRadio collaboration. Maria received her PhD from UC Berkeley working on research and development of a new resonator design that allows dark matter detectors to search for axions at higher masses than previously achievable. Prior to her graduate studies, Maria attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate and started her journey in physics in an atomic physics lab exploring the properties of impurities in diamond for the purpose of creating extremely sensitive magnetometers.

Directions and Parking

This event will take place in the Hewlett Teaching Center (370 Jane Stanford Way) on the Stanford campus. Upon arrival, please check in in the foyer of the building and follow signs for Room 200.

The closest visitor parking is in the Via Ortega Garage and along the Stanford Oval. All parking is free in spaces marked Visitor, A, or C after 4pm unless indicated otherwise. Accessible parking is also available along the Stanford Oval.

If you plan to take public transportation, some lines of the Marguerite Shuttle connect between the Palo Alto Transit Center and the campus. You can get to the Hewlett Teaching Center by taking Line P (drops off at the Stanford Oval), Line X (drops off at the ChEM-H Building on Jane Stanford Way), and Line Y (picks up across from the ChEM-H Building on Jane Stanford Way). A complete list of shuttle schedules and route maps can be found here.