Research Interests
Benjamin Safdi is an associate professor in the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics in the physics department at UC Berkeley. His research is on understanding the particle nature of dark matter. Around 80% of the matter in our Universe is in the form of dark matter, yet its microscopic nature remains completely mysterious despite nearly a century of effort. Dr. Safdi has made important contributions towards detecting dark matter under a number of well-motivated hypotheses, including the hypothesis that dark matter is an ultra-light particle called the axion. During his Miller Professorship, Dr. Safdi will work to predict the mass of the axion by performing dedicated cosmological simulations and theoretical computations of the early universe. These predictions could greatly accelerate the detection of the axion and the understanding of dark matter.
