Visitors from Above – Are We Alone? & Fuzzy Dark Matter Simulation With Jaxion

Speaker: Dr Amruth Alfred

Abstract: The age-old question of whether life exists beyond our home planet has plagued humanity for thousands of years. The discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life will be the most important discovery that human civilization could ever make – the deepest impact will not be on science but on culture, society and how we view our place in the Universe. I will present an introduction to the story of our search, from its early beginnings to where we are today in the first part of this two-part talk.

 

Speaker: Mr. Peter Ma

Abstract: Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) is a dark matter model in which ultralight bosonic particles behave coherently on astrophysical scales, leading to wave-like phenomena that are absent in conventional cold dark matter simulations. Numerical simulations are therefore essential for studying the nonlinear structure and dynamical behaviour of FDM halos. In this talk, I will introduce Jaxion, a scientific research software designed for astrophysical and cosmological simulations of Fuzzy Dark Matter. I will briefly describe the main physical equations and numerical framework implemented in Jaxion, and demonstrate several types of simulations that can be performed with the code. These examples will be illustrated using GIF animations to provide an intuitive view of the time evolution of the simulated systems, including halo formation, soliton dynamics, density fluctuations, and related wave phenomena.