Speaker:Kerstin Perez

Host: Amanda Weinstein

Title: Probing the Dark Universe with X-ray Optics

Abstract: Dark matter particles could be unstable and decay, annihilate with each other, or subtly alter the processes within stellar interiors, imprinting characteristic signals in astrophysical observations. In this talk, I will describe how relatively low-cost focusing X-ray telescope technology opens new sensitivity to rare dark matter signals. I will introduce how thermal-slumped glass optics — in which thousands of mirrors are mounted into nested shells via precision machining — helped the NuSTAR satellite mission deliver leading sensitivity to light dark matter candidates, in particular sterile neutrinos and axions. I will then discuss how similar focusing X-ray optics are now being developed for the International Axion Observatory (IAXO), providing leading sensitivity to axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) across a wide mass range.  

Bio: Kerstin Perez is originally from West Philadelphia and earned her B.A. in physics from Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from Caltech, for research using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. She then returned to Columbia University as an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow. She was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Physics at Haverford College, before joining MIT as an Assistant Professor of Physics in 2016 and an Associate Professor of Physics in 2021. She returned once again to Columbia University as faculty in 2022. She has won numerous awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, Cottrell Scholar Award, APS DPF Early Career Instrumentation Award, and MIT School of Science Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education. She is the daughter of Louis Antonio Perez, who earned his J.D. at Columbia University in 1970, and Diann Carlson Perez, who worked as a juvenile public defender for the city of Philadelphia.