Daniel Gilman

Daniel Gilman strives to understand the nature of dark matter, an enigmatic substance of unknown origin and particle properties. The force of gravity mediates the only known connection between dark matter and the small fraction of the Universe we can observe and interact with. In his research, Gilman uses the gravitational connection between light and dark matter through an effect called gravitational lensing in which light is deflected by gravitational fields. In a particular case referred to as strong lensing, a foreground galaxy and the dark matter surrounding it bend light from a distant background source in such a way that the source becomes highly magnified and multiply imaged. As a Ph.D. student at UCLA, Gilman led the development of an analysis framework to test theories of dark matter by simulating a particular kind of strong lens system referred to as a quadruply-imaged quasar. As a postdoc at the University of Toronto, he and his collaborators expanded this analysis pipeline to simulate how strong lenses would appear in a variety of dark matter theories with unique particle physics predictions. As a Brinson Prize Fellow at the University of Chicago, Gilman is refining the analysis techniques he developed to incorporate additional information from spectacular, highly-magnified lensed arcs that often encircle the main deflector in a strong lens system. Combining the new analysis techniques with forthcoming data from the James Webb Space Telescope, Gilman performs stringent tests of the concordance cosmological model of cold dark matter and explores alternative hypotheses for the nature of dark matter that, if confirmed, would overthrow cold dark matter and require new physics.