Research Expertise and Interest

astrophysics, particle physics

Research Description

Benjamin Safdi is the Henry Shenker Professor in Physics and an assistant professor in the Department of Physics.  His research investigates the microscopic nature of dark matter, which is currently unknown. He has helped establish pathways towards potentially discovering some of the most well-motivated dark matter candidates, such as axion dark matter, with novel laboratory experiments and astrophysical probes. In addition, he has developed data-analysis techniques that have helped better understand how to search for signatures of dark matter in complicated astrophysical datasets. Safdi also performs calculations and simulations within the context of dark matter models such as axion models, making use of high-performance computing resources, that inform these searches. He is a founding member of the ABRACADABRA axion dark matter experiment, and his research makes use of astrophysical data from ground- and space-based telescopes such as the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, the XMM-Newton, Chandra, and NuSTAR X-ray telescopes, and the Green Bank radio telescope.