Conveners
4.1 Plenary
- Jonathan Pober (Brown University)
After the Cosmic Microwave Background photons decoupled from baryons, the Dark Ages epoch began: density fluctuations imprinted from earlier times grew under the influence of gravity, eventually collapsing into the first stars and galaxies during the subsequent Cosmic Dawn. In the early universe, most of the baryonic matter was in the form of neutral hydrogen, detectable via its ground state’s...
A deeper than expected absorption of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by the 21-cm line hydrogen line at redshift 17 with flattened bottom has been observed using the Experiment to Detect the Global EoR signature (EDGES) instruments located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. I will briefly describe EDGES and its calibration and how the performance has been...
Following the announcement in March 2018 of the discovery of the first gravitational-wave signal from a black-hole-binary merger, it was suggested that ~30-solar-mass black holes could make up the dark matter. Since then, a number of astrophysical probes or constraints to the scenario have been discussed. I will summarize these constraints and identify associated caveats for some as well as...
