Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Dark Matter in Faint Galactic Satellites

Louis Strigari

KIPAC, Stanford

The population of known Milky Way satellite galaxies has increased significantly in recent years. Follow up spectroscopy on many of these objects has revealed them to be gravitationally bound, extremely dark matter dominated objects. In this talk, I will discuss observation and modeling of these objects, following a path of discovery in optical surveys, to targeted follow up spectroscopy, and then to searches for dark matter annihilation signals using high energy gamma-rays and neutrinos. I will then discuss the observations in a broader cosmological context, and show how forthcoming large scale galaxy surveys, in combination with probes of the high energy Universe, will provide an exciting opportunity to study dark matter on the smallest scales in the Universe and to uncover the nature of dark matter.