Research

Publications and Interests

(with apologies to A.O. Hirschman)

source

Determining the nature of dark matter has been at the heart of a long-running program in contemporary physics. However, because dark matter is extremely rare in the solar neighborhood (pithily illustrated in the xkcd comic above; also see paper 3 below), experimental searches for it have proven to be quite challenging. I have explored different aspects of this problem in the strand of my research that focuses on data-driven, or the so-called phenomenological, approaches for dark matter discovery and uncertainty quantification in parameters of physical models. The relevant publications are (bold face indicates primary or equivalent contribution):

  1. Jatan Buch, Manuel Buen-Abad, JiJi Fan, John Shing Chau Leung, Dark Matter Substructure under the Electron Scattering Lamppost, (2020) [arxiv] [journal]

  2. Jatan Buch, JiJi Fan, John Shing Chau Leung, Implications of the Gaia Sausage for Dark Matter Nuclear Interactions, (2019) [arxiv] [journal]

  3. Jatan Buch, JiJi Fan, John Shing Chau Leung, Using Gaia DR2 to Constrain Local Dark Matter Density and Thin Dark Disk, (2018) [arxiv] [journal]

Broadly speaking, another theme of my research has been the use of creative model-building, both physical and statistical, to consistently explain multiscale phenomena. As an example, in paper 5 below, my collaborators and I proposed a new minimal cosmological framework for dark matter production that naturally accommodates the high annihilation cross section required for a dark matter origin of the AMS-02 positron excess without violating other experimental constraints. The relevant publications are:

  1. Jatan Buch, Manuel Buen-Abad, JiJi Fan, John Shing Chau Leung, Galactic Origin of Relativistic Bosons and XENON1T Excess, (2020) [arxiv] [journal]

  2. Jatan Buch, Pranjal Ralegankar, Vikram Rentala, Late decaying 2-component dark matter scenario as an explanation of the AMS-02 positron excess, (2016) [arxiv] [journal]

  3. Jatan Buch, Marco Cirelli, Gaëlle Giesen, Marco Taoso, PPPC 4 DM secondary: A Poor Particle Physicist Cookbook for secondary radiation from Dark Matter, (2016) [arxiv] [journal]

Academic Bio

Besides a Master’s degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, I also have extensive research experience working in diverse research environments in India and Europe. Namely, before starting my PhD, I was an IRCC Fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, a PRISMA Fellow at the Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a research scholar at the Institut de Physique Théorique, Saclay.

I have strived to explore the topics that piqued my interest with hands-on research. To that end, I have been fortunate to have worked with, and mentored by, researchers at the vanguard of their respective fields.