Highly magnified gravitationally lensed stars as a probe to the nature of dark matter

by Prof. Jordi Miralda Escudé (University of Barcelona)

Tuesday 16 Feb 2021, 16:00 → 17:00 Asia/Kolkata

Zoom

The nature of dark matter is one of the most important questions in modern cosmology. Recently, super-magnified images of stars have been detected in clusters of galaxies, where a single star can be detected with the Hubble Space Telescope at cosmological redshifts thanks to the large magnification factor. We will discuss how these highly magnified sources provide opportunities for testing the granularity of dark matter on small scales, for example, to find signatures of axion dark matter in the form of mini halos of asteroid mass.