Dark Matter @ McGill (aka DMcGill)

Until 2021, I was a Pappalardo Fellow and NASA Einstein Fellow in the MIT Department of Physics. I received my PhD in physics from UC Berkeley in 2019 with the support of fellowships from the Hertz Foundation and the National Science Foundation. My dissertation, "Searching for the invisible: how dark forces shape our Universe" was supervised by Hitoshi Murayama and won the American Physical Society Sakurai Dissertation Award. I received my Bachelors from MIT in 2014 with a thesis jointly supervised by David Kaiser and Tracy Slatyer. In my spare time, I love making and eating all kinds of food, savoury and sweet, from a range of cuisines. 

 Before starting my PhD studies at McGill in 2021, I did my Bachelors and Masters from the Indian Institute of Science. Broadly, my research interest is theoretical physics with a focus on astrophysics and cosmology. I am particularly interested in using theoretical models in conjunction with observational data from cosmology to study mysterious things of the universe like dark matter.

Publications written as a group member: 

1) Resonant Pseudo-Dirac Dark Matter as a Sub-GeV Thermal Target

2) Photon-Dark Photon Conversion with Multiple Level Crossings

I joined McGill as a graduate student in 2022 doing my M.Sc. in physics under the supervision of Prof. Katelin Schutz and Prof. Oscar Hernandez. I have lived in Montréal my whole life, and French is my first language. After a brief career as a hospital pharmacist, I completed a B.Sc. in physics and computer science at Université de Montréal in 2022. During my B.Sc., I have done research on exactly solvable models with Prof. Luc Vinet. My broad research interests are theoretical physics and cosmology.

I am an undergraduate at McGill and I joined the group in 2023 as an NSERC USRA researcher and am continuing to work in the group for my Honours thesis. I was born and raised in Montreal and am of Honduran descent. With regards to my research interests, I am mostly fascinated by astrophysics and particle physics, especially with regards to possible new physics. Besides science, I am also very interested in history, movies and football (soccer). 

I am a graduate student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the MIT Department of Physics. I study cosmology and particle astrophysics with Tracy Slatyer’s group at the Center for Theoretical Physics, with a special interest in the nature of dark matter and its effects on the early universe. When I’m not thinking about physics, I dabble in classical music and digital painting.

Publications written in collaboration with the group:

1) An Effective Bias Expansion for 21 cm Cosmology in Redshift Space

I am an NDSEG Fellow at MIT pursuing a PhD in physics. I enjoy thinking about unconventional probes of new physics and cosmology. My PhD thesis focuses on using CHIME/FRB Outriggers to localize the world's largest sample of fast radio bursts, in order to measure their redshifts and unlock their potential as cosmological probes. Within the CHIME/FRB collaboration, I am also leading the search for gravitationally-lensed FRBs using CHIME/FRB. In my spare time I enjoy playing the cello and cooking large quantities of food.

Publications written in collaboration with the group:

1) Axion dark matter-induced echo of supernova remnants

2) Looking in the axion mirror: An all-sky analysis of stimulated decay

I am a senior physics undergraduate at MIT working jointly with DMcGill and Mark Vogelsberger’s group at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. I’m expanding research on the recently-developed Effective Field Theory for 21cm cosmology, testing its ability to distinguish between different dark matter models. I’m also exploring experimental AMO with Professor Fletcher’s Emergent Quantum Matter Group at MIT. Apart from physics, I love running with my track and cross country teammates, cooking spicy food, and organizing events for my dorm.

I’m a graduate student at UC Berkeley working on heavy-ion physics in Barbara Jacak’s group. Currently, I’m working on jet substructure studies with the ALICE experiment. I completed my undergrad at MIT in 2021, and was involved in a variety of projects there studying neutrino-nucleus interactions, axion dark matter, and nuclear structure. I’m a fan of particle physics, good food, and literature in translation.

Publications written in collaboration with the group:

1) Axion dark matter-induced echo of supernova remnants

I majored in Physics at the Indian Institute Technology Kanpur. I joined the group for summer 2022 as a MITACS Globalink Research Intern and returned to McGill in 2023 for my MSc with Prof. Jim Cline. My primary research interests include astrophysics and cosmology and their intersection with particle physics including but not limited to the search for dark matter, dark energy and physics beyond the Standard Model. When not engaged in research, I like to spend my time watching and playing different sports or playing my guitar.

Publications written in collaboration with the group:

1) New bounds on light millicharged particles from the tip of the red-giant branch

I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, majoring in physics and mathematics. I joined the group in summer 2023 as a TSI research fellow. My research interests lie in astroparticle physics, mathematical physics and the intersection of these two fields. Particularly, I hope to contribute to the search for dark matter using novel techniques. When not doing physics, I like to write, play football, run, or participate in/host trivia games!