SISSA COLLOQUIUM

[Alex Meehan]

   SISSA COLLOQUIUM


DATE AND TIME:  Thursday, 9 December 2010 at 16.30

VENUE: Lecture Room 5, groundfloor SISSA - Santorio Building, Via 
Bonomea 265

The seminar will be preceded by a get-together at 16.10 in front of 
Lecture Room 5 for tea and coffee.

TITLE: Dark matter in Galaxies

SPEAKER: Paolo Salucci - Astrophysics Sector, SISSA

ABSTRACT: I discuss the mass discrepancy phenomenon in galaxies that, 
usually is accounted by postulating the presence of a non luminous 
component. In the theoretical framework of Newtonian gravity I will 
first recall the state-of-the-art of numerical simulations performed in 
the current LCDM scenario of cosmological structure formation. I, then, 
report the complex and much-telling phenomenology of the distribution of 
dark matter in spirals, ellipticals, and dwarf spheroidals. Care will be 
given to show that such a coherent observational framework is obtained 
from different and large samples of galaxies and by means of very 
different methods of investigation and by exploiting different tracers 
of the gravitational field. Hints on how the empirical scenario in 
galaxies, including the Milky Way and the nearby ones, affects the 
cosmological investigations, are given throughout the talk. Among them, 
constraints on the (elusive) nature of the dark matter particles and on 
its direct and indirect search.

This seminar belongs to the network of Dark Matter Awareness Week 2010: 
the content of this seminar is being delivered in more than 140 
institutions of more than 50 countries.