Theoretical—Astrophysics

Current research focuses on determining the location of dark matter in the Milky Way.  We perform n-body simulations of the tidal disruption of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way halo, using MilkyWay@home, a 0.5 PetaFLOPS volunteer computing platform built in-house. We compare the simulations to actual Milky Way data to determine the best parameters for the simulations, thus constraining the amount and distribution of dark matter in the halo. We are testing predictions of dark matter distribution for particular dark matter particles against the measured positions and motions of stars in the Milky Way.

Faculty Researchers:

  • Heidi Newberg
  • Victor Robles Sanchez
  • Yong Zheng
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