Nirmal Raj

	Nirmal Raj Postdoctoral Research Associate, TRIUMF TRIUMF, MOB 222 4004 Wesbrook Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 2A3 Canada   604-222-7653 nraj@triumf.ca
	Research Topics Much of my time is spent trying to fathom the nature of dark matter -- the ubiquitous, invisible stuff that makes up 80% of the mass of matter in the universe, responsible for giving the cosmos its current look on large scales. I am smitten by the idea that dark matter's identity may be revealed in an astro-particle setting, such as observing that dying stars get reheated by dark matter, or glimpsing unique tracks of dark matter in laboratory detectors. I also try to imagine mechanisms for making dark matter in a young, hot universe. Additionally, I research scenarios at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that address long-standing puzzles regarding the Fermi scale (10-16 cm). These principally concern the recently discovered Higgs boson, as well as exotica like dark matter at this scale, force-carriers called leptoquarks, and a broken spacetime symmetry called supersymmetry.   Publications