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 a short CV for a little 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
Open positions: (Please contact me for more details)
The group is a member of the collaborative research project SFB 676 on "Particles, strings and the early universe: the structure of matter and spacetime."
Outreach
Summer school on cosmology
(Stockholm, 8 - 17 August 2008)
I generally enjoy giving popular scientific talks on cosmology and related issues. Are you interested? Just contact me!
Publications
(These are some selected publications only. For a full and
up-to-date list,
please refer to
SPIRES.)
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)
Gamma-ray spectra from dark matter annihilations, 20 slides
(pdf, 1.3
MB) TeV Particle Astrophysics 2007, Venice
(Italy), 27 - 31 August 2007.
Searching for point-like dark matter sources, 26 slides
(pdf, 2.6
MB)
5th workshop on High Energy Gamma-ray Experiments
(SciNeGHE07), Frascati, Rome (Italy), 18-20 June 2007.
Dark matter from late decays and the small-scale
structure problems, 30 slides
(pdf, 3.2
MB) Bielefeld,
(Germany), 5 June 2007.
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.
I generally enjoy giving popular scientific talks on cosmology and related issues. Are you interested? Just contact me!