Publications by authors named "Cora Dvorkin"

We set the strongest limits to date on the velocity-independent dark matter (DM)-proton cross section σ for DM masses m=10  keV to 100 GeV, using large-scale structure traced by the Lyman-alpha forest: e.g., a 95% lower limit σ<6×10^{-30}  cm^{2}, for m=100  keV.

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Dark matter (DM) could be a relic of freeze-in through a light mediator, where the DM is produced by extremely feeble, IR-dominated processes in the thermal standard model plasma. In the simplest viable models with DM lighter than 1 MeV, the DM has a small effective electric charge and is born with a nonthermal phase-space distribution. This DM candidate would cause observable departures from standard cosmological evolution.

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The epoch of the formation of the first stars, known as the cosmic dawn, has emerged as a new arena in the search for dark matter. In particular, the first claimed 21-cm detection exhibits a deeper global absorption feature than expected, which could be caused by a low baryonic temperature, and has been interpreted as a sign for electromagnetic interactions between baryons and dark matter. This hypothesis has a striking prediction: large temperature anisotropies sourced by the velocity-dependent cooling of the baryons.

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The recent BICEP2 measurement of B-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background (r = 0.2(-0.05)(+0.

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