2022 Project Description

Dark Matter in Massive Galaxy Clusters

Supervisors

Sut-Ieng Tam, Keiichi Umetsu
Find out more about supervisors on ASIAA website

Task Description and Goals

Galaxy clusters are known as the largest gravitational bound objects in our Universe. About 85% of their mass content is composed of dark matte which is one of the most mysterious constituents of our Universe. This invisible matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force but with gravity. Therefore, to detect dark matter, we can measure the deflection of light from background objects by gravitational lensing, a process that is independent of the physical or dynamical state of the lensing matter. Since 85% of matter content in galaxy cluster is dark matter, galaxy clusters act as ideal laboratories to study properties of dark matter. With this summer project, we aim to study the behaviour of dark matter in galaxy clusters. Through gravitational lensing analysis, key features of galaxy clusters, such as total mass, concentration, halo shapes can be constrained.
Depending on the student's interest, the successful applicants will be able to use observational data on Hubble Frontier Field cluster from Hubble Space Telescope and Subaru to learn how to conduct gravitational lensing analysis, or N-body simulation dataset to study properties of different dark matter models.

Required Background

Basic knowledge of physics and mathematics, passion for astrophysics