A large body of evidence now indicates that about 80% of the matter in the universe is of a new type, known as dark matter. A variety of experimental and observational techniques from high energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology have been brought to bear on the study of this new type of matter. But in order to correctly interpret the data from these many different experiments, it is necessary to develop a theoretical framework for understanding dark matter. The PI's work will focus on developing the connection between new theoretical dark matter models and data. The PI will explore how data from many different experiments can together be used to test non-standard models of dark matter, and how new models of dark matter can be used to explain the data. A focus will be on the study of isospin-violating dark matter, WIMPless dark matter, asymmetric dark matter, and on the use of neutrino detectors to search for dark matter. The Broader Impact of this proposal will be the communication of these and other exciting developments at the frontier of fundamental physics to the broader Hawaii community, particularly at the high school level. The PI's efforts will be focused on participation in the QuarkNet program.
