Talks

Astrophysical observations suggest that the majority of matter in the Universe is made up of novel Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).  Such WIMPs are often predicted by extensions to the Standard Model.  Efforts have been underway for more than two decades to detect WIMPs directly in detectors on earth.  The challenge is great because of the small energies involved and the low interaction rates. The field has been driven by progress in detectors able to identify radioactive backgrounds. I will review how recent enthusiasm for low-mass WIMPs, which was generated by tantalizing hints seen in several experiments, has waned.  Lastly, I will discuss various ideas to check the longstanding DAMA WIMP-detection claim, including the feasibility of alkali-halide cryogenic detectors.

Can we learn about New Physics with astronomical and astro-particle data? Understanding how this is possible is key to unraveling one of the most pressing mysteries at the interface of cosmology and particle physics: the fundamental, particle nature of the dark matter.
I will discuss some of the recent puzzling findings in astro-particle and astronomical observations that might be related to signals from dark matter. I will first review the status of explanations to the cosmic-ray positron excess, emphasizing how we might be able to discriminate between astrophysical sources and dark matter. 
I will then discuss the evidence for an X-ray line at 3.5 keV, and present new results on systematic effects and on the role of previously underestimated astrophysical lines.
Finally, I will discuss a reported excess of gamma rays from the central regions of the Galaxy.  I will address the question of whether we are possibly observing a signal from dark matter annihilation, how to test this hypothesis, and which astrophysical mechanisms constitute the relevant background.

 

In these lectures, we will study the bosonic theory of higher-spin gravity in four dimensions. After discussing the reasons for interest in the theory, we will focus on the equations of motion and their content. We will aim to construct the equations from the ground up in a motivated way. The logical order will differ somewhat from standard introductions. As preliminaries, we will discuss the geometry of spinors and twistors in (anti) de Sitter space, along with various viewpoints on free massless fields with arbitrary spin. An ulterior goal of the lectures is to introduce a new version of the theory (arXiv:1502.06685), formulated on a fixed (A)dS background