The invisible decay of cold dark matter into a slightly lighter dark sector particle on cosmological time-scales has been proposed as a solution to the $S_8$ tension. In this talk, I want to present a possible embedding of this scenario within a particle physics framework and discuss its phenomenology. The model is set up of a minimal dark matter decay, where the dark sector contains two...
Can modifications to Hawking evaporation of small black holes be probed by observing gravitational waves from the early Universe? In this talk I will argue that the answer to this tantalizing question may in fact be positive.
It has been recently proposed that Hawking evaporation might slow down significantly after a black hole has lost about half of its mass, considerably extending its...
We apply current analytical knowledge on the characteristic mass and linear evolution of miniclusters down to redshift $z=0$ to the hypothetical minicluster distribution of the Milky Way.
Using the core-halo relation for stable soliton solutions composed of axion-like particles (ALPs), we connect the galactic minicluster mass distribution to that of their ALP star cores.
We consider...
The effective number of neutrinos, $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$, is an important parameter in standard hot big bang cosmology. In this work, we compute the dominant QED correction to the neutrino-electron interaction rate in the vicinity of neutrino decoupling in the early universe, and estimate its impact on $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$. We find that the correction to the interaction rate is at the sub-percent...
Polarisation studies over a significant redshift range are an important tool in understanding the evolution of cosmic magnetic fields and unrevealing their origin. As most depolarisation effects are highly wavelength depended, the combination of different surveys allows us to distinguish between different effects.
We use the synergy of LOFAR and Apertif; starting with sources known to show...
