"Microlensing brown dwarfs"
Radek Poleski (OSU Astronomy)
Microlensing events probe the mass distribution of lensing objects with sensitivity that does not depend on brightness of the lensing objects. Thus, it can detect single black holes, free-floating planets, or single brown dwarfs. I will present a new approach for selecting single brown dwarf microlensing events. This approach is applied to four events observed by K2 mission, which almost double the sample of microlensing brown dwarfs.
"Thermal WIMPs on the Brink"
Tim Linden (OSU Physics)
In this talk, I will review the status of dark matter in the form of thermal WIMPs - noting both the current state of potential detections and constraints (confusing) as well as the future potential for observations of gamma-rays and cosmic-rays to rule out this well-motivated dark matter paradigm (exciting!).
