Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, University of New Hampshire:
In this talk, I will describe my efforts to understand the nature of the mysterious dark matter. I provide an overview of the general problem and then describe my current approach to it, which is to characterize the behavior of a proposed dark matter particle, the axion. I will give some insight into how I am using a range of tools – model building, computation, and high energy astrophysics – to get at the basic question of “what is the statistical mechanics of axion dark matter?”