Related papers: WIMP annihilation effects on primordial star forma…
We estimate the maximum contribution to reionization from the first generation of massive stars, with zero metallicity, under the assumption that one of these stars forms with a fixed mass in every collapsed halo in which metal-free gas is…
Direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) formed from the collapse of atomically-cooled primordial gas in the early Universe are strong candidates for the seeds of supermassive BHs. DCBHs are thought to form in atomic cooling haloes in the…
The first stars, galaxies, star clusters, and direct-collapse black holes are expected to have formed in low-mass ($\sim$$10^{5}-10^{9} ~ M_{\odot}$) haloes at Cosmic Dawn ($z \sim 10 - 30$) under conditions of efficient gas cooling,…
Many theories of dark matter (DM) predict that DM particles can be captured by stars via scattering on ordinary matter. They subsequently condense into a DM core close to the center of the star and eventually annihilate. In this work, we…
The most compelling and popular models for dark matter predict that it should congregate and annihilate in stellar cores. Stars where annihilation contributes substantially to the total energy budget look very different to those with which…
The continuous infall of dark matter with low velocity dispersion from all directions in a galactic halo leads to the formation of caustics which are very small scale ($\sim$parsec) high density structures. If the dark matter is made up of…
Future dedicated radio interferometers, including HERA and SKA, are very promising tools that aim to study the epoch of reionization and beyond via measurements of the 21 cm signal from neutral hydrogen. Dark matter (DM) annihilations into…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are a viable candidate for the relic abundance of dark matter (DM) produced in the early universe. So far WIMPs have eluded direct detection through interactions with baryonic matter. Neutrino…
Upcoming near-infrared facilities (e.g. JWST/NIRCam, ELT/MICADO) will dramatically increase the detectability of galactic center Cepheids despite extreme extinction at optical wavelengths. In this work, we study the impact of dark matter…
The fragmentation of star-forming interstellar clouds, and the resulting stellar initial mass function (IMF), is strongly affected by the temperature structure of the collapsing gas. Since radiation feedback from embedded stars can modify…
We explore the production of thermal dark matter (DM) candidates (WIMPs, SIMPs, ELDERs and Cannibals) during cosmic reheating. Assuming a general parametrization for the scaling of the inflaton energy density and the standard model (SM)…
In cold dark matter cosmological models, the first stars to form are believed to do so within small protogalaxies. We wish to understand how the evolution of these early protogalaxies changes once the gas forming them has been enriched with…
The inability of standard non-interacting cold dark matter (CDM) to account for the small scale structure of individual galaxies has led to the suggestion that the dark matter may undergo elastic and/or inelastic scattering. We simulate the…
We study the impact of astrophysical processes on the gamma-ray background produced by the annihilation of dark matter particles in cosmological halos, with particular attention to the consequences of the formation of supermassive black…
We calculate the reionization history for different models of the stellar population and explore the effects of primordial magnetic fields, dark matter decay and dark matter annihilation on reionization. We find that stellar populations…
We compute the bounds on the dark matter (DM) annihilation cross section using the most recent Cosmic Microwave Background measurements from WMAP9, SPT'11 and ACT'10. We consider DM with mass in the MeV-TeV range annihilating 100% into…
We argue that WIMP dark matter can annihilate via long-lived "WIMPonium" bound states in reasonable particle physics models of dark matter (DM). WIMPonium bound states can occur at or near threshold leading to substantial enhancements in…
It has been proposed that during the formation of the first generation stars there might be a "dark star" phase in which the power of the star comes from dark matter annihilation. The adiabatic contraction process to form the dark star…
We study the impact of molecular (${\rm H_2}$) and atomic (HI) hydrogen cooling on the galaxy formation threshold. We calculate the fraction of dark matter (DM) halos that exceeds a critical mass required for star formation,…
Understanding the nature of the Dark Matter (DM) is one of the current challenges in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Knowing the properties of the DM particle would shed light on physics beyond the Standard Model and even provide us with…