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Center

Gravitational Discovery for Particle Physics

IGC apple Logo created by Monica Rincon Ramirez

Since Lemaˆıtre and Hubble, a century of observations of the expansion history and structure of the universe has used gravity as a tool for discovery, establishing that the vast majority of matter and energy in the universe cannot be explained within the Standard Model (SM) and requires particle physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Nearly
all current efforts to determine the nature of dark matter explore hypothetical non-gravitational interactions between SM particles and dark particles.

To understand the full potential of gravitational discovery for BSM physics, we will pursue the following: Characterize the space of complex dark sectors, Model structure formation in dissipative DM scenarios, Search for DM objects in mergers, Characterize small-scale structure constraints.

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About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.