Seminar Speaker

Dr Lewis Prole

Venue

Room G06, Kane Science Building, UCC

Time/Date 

4pm / Monday, 29 Sept, 2025

Title

Astrophysical versus Primordial Black Holes 

Abstract

The recent discovery that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) exist in the very early Universe has caused tensions with the Standard Cosmological Model, as theorists have struggled to explain how these objects became so massive in such a short period of time. This seminar will discuss current attempts to model SMBHs formation through astrophysical processes (such as star formation and direct collapse black holes), before considering the exotic possibility that some/all of what we call 'dark matter' is actually made up of primordial black holes (PBHs) which have existed since the time of the big bang.

Seminar Speaker

Gerard Higgins

Venue

Room G06, Kane Science Building, UCC

Time/Date 

4pm / Monday, 15 Sept, 2025

Title

Hunting for Dark Matter using Levitated Superconductors

Abstract

Recent advances in precision measurements with mechanical oscillators are enabling new tests of fundamental physics. They allow quantum physics to be probed using relatively large masses, and they open new avenues for dark matter detection. We are developing ultrasensitive mechanical sensors based on magnetically levitated superconductors. This platform is promising because the motion of the millimetre-scale superconductors can be (i) precisely probed using superconducting quantum circuits and (ii) highly isolated from environmental noise, thanks to levitation in near-dissipationless traps, under ultrahigh vacuum, at millikelvin temperatures.

Our sensors will probe a range of dark matter models in unexplored parameter regimes. With continued progress, our platform may enable a gravity-based search for dark matter in the laboratory, offering an exciting new avenue for discovery.

Seminar Speaker

Matthew Hopkins 

Venue

Room G06, Kane Science Building, UCC

Time/Date 

4pm / Monday, 8 Sept, 2025

Title

The Galactic Interstellar Object Population 

Abstract

Sourced from distant planetary systems and forming a huge Galaxy-spanning population, the properties of interstellar objects (ISOs) depend on processes across a range of astrophysical scales. This population plays an active role in Galactic life, potentially seeding planet formation in protoplanetary disks and causing fast radio bursts in collisions with neutron stars. With the imminent Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) set to increase our sample of known ISOs by an order of magnitude, I will present a predicted chemodynamical model of the ISO population derived using the Gaia stellar survey and models of protoplanetary disk chemistry, along with a simulation of ISO discoveries in the LSST. I predict that the Galactic ISO population has a complex velocity distribution which is correlated with both chemical composition and age, and that these features will be retained in the sample discovered by the LSST. Furthermore, the discoverability simulation shows that the LSST will find 5-50 ISOs over 10 years, and constrain the size frequency distribution slope of ISOs with just a few discovered objects. These results mean that the Rubin ISO sample can be used to test models of planetesimal formation, Galactic evolution, and tidal stream formation.