This event was recorded on July 5, 2023 at Aspen Center for Physics during the 2023 DeWolf Foundation Physics Talks, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
What is life like as a subatomic particle? It depends who you ask. There are the particles we know and love in the Standard Model of particle physics. Some of them live billions of years, some of them struggle to last beyond a billionth of a billionth of a second. And then there’s the dark matter, whose properties are shrouded in mystery. Dark matter is the dominant form of matter in the universe, whose existence is closely connected to our own, but its exact character remains elusive. In this talk, Lin describes the ongoing quest to uncover the hidden life of the dark matter particle.
Tongyan Lin works in theoretical particle physics and cosmology, studying models of dark matter and methods to detect the particle properties of dark matter. She works on a variety of possible signatures of dark matter, including in astrophysical data or in underground direct detection experiments. Currently, Dr. Lin is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. She obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2012 and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics in the University of Chicago and at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship Award, Macronix Young Research Award, and DOE Early Career Award.