Joint Astrophysical Colloquium
Investigating the nature of dark matter with gravitational lensing
Chris Fassnacht (UC Davies)
Thursday 19/09/2024 @ 11:30, Sala Antonio Sollima (IV piano Battiferro)
Strong gravitational lensing can provide critical information about the nature of dark matter because it can detect dark matter distributions even if they are not luminous. One main approach is to use lensing to determine the statistics of low-mass dark matter halos in a regime where alternate dark matter models make different predictions than the standard cold dark matter paradigm. In the first part of this talk, I will discuss the more traditional lensing technique, which utilizes the flux ratios of gravitationally lensed quasars, and show that this approach may be affected by complexity in the overall mass distribution of the primary lensing galaxy. In the second part of the talk I will present the gravitational imaging technique, and discuss how new sky surveys can enhance the potential impact of this approach.