Torsten Bringmann

• Address:
  II. Institut für Theoretische Physik
  Universität Hamburg
  Luruper Chaussee 149
  D-22761 Hamburg
  Germany
  
  
• Office: 67/105
  (close to the DESY side gate, take bus No.2 to get there)


• Phone: +49 (0)40 8998-5148
• Fax: +49 (0)40 8998-4724
• Email: torsten.bringmann_at_desy.de

Info

I am working on astroparticle physics, cosmology and physics beyond the standard model. As an Emmy Noether fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG), I am leading a Junior Research Group at the II. Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Hamburg. Before, I was an affiliated researcher in the CoPS group at Stockholm University (part of the HEAC centre of excellence and the Oskar Klein Centre, OKC) and a postdoc in the High Energy Physics Sector of SISSA. See my CV for some more information.

Research

My main research so far has focussed on dark matter in the context of supersymmetry and models with large extra dimensions. Further interests include cosmic rays, primordial black holes and general relativity. I have written a short popular introduction to some of these topics; for more details, please have a look at a my articles and the references therein. If you are interested in some general introductory information to cosmology, see for example the Cambridge Cosmology site or Martin Whites collection of tutorials.

I am also one of the authors of DarkSUSY, a publicly available numerical package to compute dark matter properties in supersymmetric and other frameworks. Recent additions include, e.g., internal bremsstrahlung and the small-scale cutoff in the power spectrum of density perturbations for WIMP dark matter. For the most recent release, click on the logo to the right.

Group activities

"From Dark Matter Properties to the Fundamental Theory" (DFG grant BR 3954/1-1)

Cosmology, and dark matter physics in particular, is an extremely timely subject that consequently has developed into one of the key science questions in recent years. Remarkably, due to its interdisciplinary nature, the subject will receive significant input from shortly upcoming experiments as different as accelerators (the LHC, in particular), various new ground- and space-based telescopes as well as dark matter detectors on earth. On the theoretical side, this is complemented with many interesting new ideas, indicating that these are very exciting times for cosmology, where already the near future might witness a solution to the dark matter puzzle. Our group aims at making use of the complementarity between these approches to devise promising strategies for determining as precisely as possible the nature and the detailed properties of the dark matter, thereby gaining insight into the underlying fundamental theory.

More specifically, the group's research interests include:
• Implications of radiative corrections ("internal bremsstrahlung") and non-perturbative effects ("Sommerfeld enhancements")
  for dark matter annihilation
• Multi-messenger and multi-wavelength strategies for the indirect detection of dark matter
• Dark matter and collider physics; complementarity with other approaches
• The small-scale distribution of (dark) matter
• Strategies for the detection of non-WIMP dark matter candidates

Currently, the group consists of myself, Masaki Asano (postdoc), Laura van den Aarssen (PhD student) and Francesca Calore (PhD student); former members are Mitsuru Kakizaki (now at Toyama university) and Yasar Goedecke (Diploma 10/2011). It is embedded in the AstroParticle theory group at Hamburg university and also a member of the collaborative research project SFB 676 on "Particles, strings and the early universe: the structure of matter and spacetime." Dark matter is a research interest shared with the DESY theory group and the experimental AstroParticle group at Hamburg University, both located on the same campus.


Open positions: (Please contact me for more details)

• There are several ways of joining our group as a postdoc, PhD student or visitor by means of external funding which you could apply for with us as your host institution - e.g. through a Humboldt or DFG research fellowship, or European FP7 or ERC grants (see also this link for a list of research funding programs in Germany). Please contact me if you are interested in one of these possibilities!
• Are you interested in doing a Diploma/Master thesis connected to dark matter? Let me know!


Events:

• International Workshop on Indirect Dark Matter Searches, 14 - 17 Jun 2010
• Dark Matter Visitor program in 2010/2011 (with the SFB676)
  [long-term visitors: Pat Scott (Stockholm U), Mitsuru Kakizaki (LAPTH, Annecy), Michael Gustafsson (Padova U),
  Fiorenza Donato (Torino U), Roberto Lineros (Valencia U), Pierre Salati (LAPTH, Annecy)]
• Mini-Symposium on Dark Matter Physics, 3 - 4 Dec 2009

Teaching

• WiSe 2010/11: Proseminar Theoretische Physik und Astroteilchenphysik (more... )
  
• SoSe 2011: Lecture on Dark Matter (more... )
  
• WiSe 2011/12: Proseminar Kosmologie und Astroteilchenphysik (more... )
  

Outreach

• DESY open day 2011 with posters about dark matter, an Astro-Particle Quiz
  and a popular talk on dark matter and dark energy
• Summer school on cosmology (Stockholm, 8 - 17 August 2008)

Publications

(These are some selected publications only. For a full and up-to-date list, please refer to INSPIRE.)

Articles:
• Particle Models and the Small-Scale Structure of Dark Matter.
  Torsten Bringmann
  New J. Phys. 11, 105027 (2009).
• New Positron Spectral Features from Supersymmetric Dark Matter - a Way to Explain the PAMELA Data?
  Lars Bergström, Torsten Bringmann and Joakim Edsjö
  Phys. Rev. D78, 103520 (2008).
• New Gamma-Ray Contributions to Supersymmetric Dark Matter Annihilation.
  Torsten Bringmann, Lars Bergström and Joakim Edsjö
  JHEP 0801, 049 (2008).
• The galactic antiproton spectrum at high energies: Background expectation vs. exotic contributions
  Torsten Bringmann and Pierre Salati
  Phys. Rev. D75, 083006 (2007).
• Gamma rays from Kaluza-Klein dark matter
  Lars Bergström, Torsten Bringmann, Martin Eriksson and Michael Gustafsson
  Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 131301 (2005).
• Primordial black holes from inflationary models with and without broken scale invariance
  Torsten Bringmann, Claus Kiefer and David Polarski
  Phys. Rev. D65, 024008 (2002).

Theses:
• Cosmological Aspects of Universal Extra Dimensions (ps.gz, 820 kB| pdf, 1.2 MB)
  PhD thesis, ISBN 91-7155-117-4, Stockholm 2005. (I try to keep the list of errata and typos updated...)
  
• Primordiale schwarze Löcher im inflationären Universum (ps.gz, 420 kB| pdf, 720 kB)
  Diploma thesis, Freiburg 2001. (Unfortunately only in German, but there is a summary in English)

Talks: (selection only; please contact me for others)
• Indirect Dark Matter Searches, 38 slides (pdf, 13 MB)
  TeV Particle Astrophysics 2010, Paris (France), 19 - 23 July 2010.
• Thermal Decoupling of WIMPs, 15 slides (pdf, 4.4 MB)
  PPC 2010 - international workshop on the interconnection between particle physics and cosmology, Torino (Italy), 12 - 16 July 2010.
• Cosmic rays - a key to dark matter searches?, 23 slides (pdf, 4.8 MB)
  74. yearly meeting of the German physical society (DPG), Bonn (Germany), 15 - 19 March 2010.
• Dark Matter Annihilation Signals - the importance of radiative corrections, 20 slides (pdf, 1.8 MB)
  IDM 2008, Stockholm (Sweden), 18 - 22 August 2008.
• Dark matter from late decays and the small-scale structure problems, 30 slides (pdf, 3.2 MB)
  Bielefeld, (Germany), 5 June 2007.

Links

• Astronomy picture of the day
• Anne Green has a vast collection of very useful astrophysics and cosmology links, so there is no need to repeat them here.

but you might also want to find out more about the fascinating game of Go, learn a new language, plan some outdoor activities, or ...