Ohio State is in the process of revising websites and program materials to accurately reflect compliance with the law. While this work occurs, language referencing protected class status or other activities prohibited by Ohio Senate Bill 1 may still appear in some places. However, all programs and activities are being administered in compliance with federal and state law.

Cosmology Lunch: "Constraining the primordial power spectrum using minihalos" Sten Delos

astrolunch
Thu, April 19, 2018
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
TBA

Ultracompact minihalos (UCMHs) have attracted considerable interest as a probe of the primordial power spectrum at small scales.  However, previous treatments assumed that halos collapsing at early times possess an extremely steep r^-9/4 density profile.  We recently found that UCMHs actually develop shallower r^-3/2 or r^-1 inner profiles depending on the shape of the power spectrum, but these halos are still highly concentrated due to their early formation.  I will discuss these results and the factors that set the inner density profile of a dark matter halo.  I will also outline the process of deriving power spectrum constraints in this revised picture.  Since the formalism can now include halos that collapse at any time, our preliminary revised constraints turn out to be stronger than prior constraints from UCMHs.