Research
I work on dark matter and cosmology as a PhD student in the QHEAT group at Queen's University with Joe Bramante, and as a visiting researcher at Heidelberg University with Joerg Jaeckel.
- Composite dark matter. How dark matter that assembles into large bound states while secluded from the Standard Model leaves a relic population of its binding field, visible as extra radiation in the CMB or as a subdominant dark component.
- Solar axions. Axions produced in the Sun that stay gravitationally bound to it, and their stimulated decay into photons (M.Sc. thesis with Katelin Schutz at McGill).
Publications
2025
Katarina Bleau, Yilda Boukhtouchen, Joseph Bramante, Rohan Kulkarni
Theses
Axion Basinschein: A search for gravitationally bound solar axions via stimulated decay into photons
M.Sc. thesis, Heidelberg University (2022) · Zenodo
Research carried out at McGill University, supervised by Katelin Schutz and Joerg Jaeckel.
B.Sc. thesis, Leipzig University (2019) · arXiv:1911.06608
Seminar talks
Dark Matter as Long-Lived Particles (LLPs) Seminar 2021
Graduate seminar presentation for Dark Matter Theory course at Heidelberg University. Covered phase-space suppression, small coupling parameters, LLP signatures at the LHC.
Causal Structure of Spacetime Seminar 2019
Graduate seminar presentation for QFT and Gravity course at Leipzig University. Topics: causal and chronological relations, globally hyperbolic spacetimes, Cauchy surfaces.