Constraining Dark Matter with the Musket Ball Cluster

Musket Ball Cluster
I have been leading the effort to study in detail a newly discovered dissociative galaxy cluster merger (DLSCL J0916.2+2951 a.k.a the Musket Ball Cluster), were the collisionless dark matter (blue, in the figure) and galaxies have become separated from the collisional cluster gas (red, in the figure). To date only ten dissociative mergers have been confirmed, the most famous being the Bullet Cluster. These dissections of the cosmos are proving to be some of the best laboratories for studying dark matter.

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For a more detailed account see our journal article "Discovery of a Dissociative Galaxy Cluster Merger with Large Physical Separation".   

Merging Cluster Collaboration

 

Dark Matter is one of the great outstanding mysteries. Although still in its infancy, the study of merging galaxy clusters has been shown to be one of the best means of determining the nature of dark matter. However to realize this potential requires a concerted effort on the part of astronomers and computational theorist, due to necessity to compare simulations and observations of real systems.  UC Davis is a leading center on the observation of merging clusters, having led the investigation of four of the ten confirmed dissociative mergers.  UC Irvine is a leading center on computation/theory of simulating self interacting dark matter physics on astrophysical scales. We established a UC Davis-Irvine workgroup devoted the observation and subsequent simulation of merging galaxy clusters with the directive of determining the nature of dark matter. 

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This collaboration is supported in part by a grant from the University of California High-Performance Astrocomputing Center.

Research Interests

  • Dark Matter
  • (Merging) Galaxy Clusters
  • Weak Lensing
  • X-ray astronomy
  • Optical astronomy
  • The Universe

Collaborators