Chris Gordon

My research interests are in astroparticle physics and cosmology. I am particularly interested in finding non-gravitational evidence for dark matter. This has led me to investigate the astrophysics of the Galactic Centre. It is there that the non-gravitational signatures of dark matter are likely to be the largest. In particular, dark matter may be self-annihilating into ordinary matter, which could produce electromagnetic radiation such as gamma rays. However, there are also a lot of other astrophysical processes taking place in the Galactic Center which produce electromagnetic radiation. In particular, millisecond pulsars produce a very similar signal to dark matter self-annihilation. These other astrophysical processes have to be accurately accounted for before one can determine if there is any residual electromagnetic radiation due to dark matter self-annihilation.

I am currently working on a couple of projects related to observationally testing the axion proposal for dark matter. I am also working on a project to constrain dark matter using gravitational wave observations.

In the past, I have worked on projects related to inflation, the cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure and galaxy clusters.