ERC Starting Grant · 2021
Search for Milli-lenses to discriminate between dark matter models
One of the most compelling mysteries in both cosmology and particle physics is the nature of Dark Matter (DM). We propose to investigate this problem using strong gravitational lensing of active galaxies on the key but poorly-explored milliarcsecond scales. Gravitational lensed images with angular separation on milliarcsecond scales probe gravitational lens systems where the lens is a compact object with mass in the range 10^6 - 10^9 solar masses. This mass range is particularly critical for the widely accepted Lambda-CDM cosmological model, which predicts many more DM sub-halos, i.e., DM halos on sub-galactic scales (masses below ~ 10^11 solar masses), than currently observed. The most…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.