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Astrometry -- the precise measurement of positions and motions of celestial objects -- has emerged as a promising avenue for characterizing the dark matter population in our Galaxy. By leveraging recent advances in simulation-based…
Weak-scale supersymmetry is one of the most favoured theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics that elegantly solves various theoretical and observational problems in both particle physics and cosmology. In this thesis, I…
We propose an empirical likelihood ratio test for nonparametric model selection, where the competing models may be nested, nonnested, overlapping, misspecified, or correctly specified. It compares the squared prediction errors of models…
In this review statistical issues appearing in astrophysical searches for particle dark matter, i.e. indirect detection (dark matter annihilating into standard model particles) or direct detection (dark matter particles scattering in deep…
We propose a new scientific application of unsupervised learning techniques to boost our ability to search for new phenomena in data, by detecting discrepancies between two datasets. These could be, for example, a simulated standard-model…
Information in the time distribution of points in a state space reconstructed from observed data yields a test for ``nonstationarity''. Framed in terms of a statistical hypothesis test, this numerical algorithm can discern whether some…
The Large Area Telescope on the Fermi gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST, ex-GLAST) provides unprecedented sensitivity for all-sky monitoring of gamma-ray activity. It is an adequate telescope to detect transient sources, since the observatory…
In particle physics and cosmology, distinguishing subtle new physics signals from established backgrounds is a fundamental and persistent challenge for phenomenologists. This paper discuss a simple and robust statistical framework to…
The nature of dark matter is a longstanding enigma of physics; it may consist of particles beyond the Standard Model that are still elusive to experiments. Among indirect search techniques, which look for stable products from the…
The statistical methods used by the ATLAS Collaboration for setting upper limits or establishing a discovery are reviewed, as they are fundamental ingredients in the search for new phenomena. The analyses published so far adopted different…
In statistics, there are a variety of methods for performing model selection that all stem from slightly different paradigms of statistical inference. The reasons for choosing one particular method over another seem to be based entirely on…
We present a new method to interpret the $\gamma$-ray data of our inner Galaxy as measured by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi LAT). We train and test convolutional neural networks with simulated Fermi-LAT images based on models tuned…
The classical likelihood ratio test (LRT) based on the asymptotic chi-squared distribution of the log likelihood is one of the fundamental tools of statistical inference. A recent universal LRT approach based on sample splitting provides…
Unassociated Fermi-LAT sources provide a population with discovery potential. We discuss efforts to find new source associations for this population, and summarize the successes to date. We discuss how the measured gamma-ray properties of…
Particle physics experiments such as those run in the Large Hadron Collider result in huge quantities of data, which are boiled down to a few numbers from which it is hoped that a signal will be detected. We discuss a simple probability…
Thousands of person-years have been invested in searches for New Physics (NP), the majority of them motivated by theoretical considerations. Yet, no evidence of beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics has been found. This suggests that…
We describe an image-based method that uses two radio criteria, compactness and spectral index, to identify promising pulsar candidates among Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) unassociated sources. These criteria are applied to those radio…
Astrophysics and cosmology can be used to test the standard model of particle physics under conditions and over distance and time scales not accessible to laboratory experiments. Most of the astrophysical observations are in good agreement…
The Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (CMSSM) is one of the simplest and most widely-studied supersymmetric extensions to the standard model of particle physics. Nevertheless, current data do not sufficiently constrain the…
We search for excess gamma-ray emission coincident with the positions of confirmed and candidate Milky Way satellite galaxies using 6 years of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). Our sample of 45 stellar systems includes 28…