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Physics

My physics interests lie broadly in the astroparticle world, under the giant umbrella of dark matter. In particular, I am interested in primordial black holes and axions, but my attention is easily swayed by the craziest idea in the room. I completed my PhD at the University of Sydney under Archil Kobakhdize and Celine Boehm, with my thesis, ‘The Gravity of Particle Physics: dark matter, black holes, and axions.’ Currently I am a postdoc at UCLA in the astroparticle group (TEPAPP) with Alexander Kusenko and Graciela Gelmini. More details can be found on InspireHEP.

Papers

Direct collapse supermassive black holes from relic particle decay
Y. Lu, ZSCP, A. Kusenko

Feeding plankton to whales: high-redshift supermassive black holes from tiny black hole explosions
Y. Lu, ZSCP, A. Kusenko

Explaining the GeV excess with exploding black holes
ZSCP and A. Kusenko, Phys.Lett.B 845 (2023), 138175

Constraints on late-forming exploding black holes
ZSCP and A. Kusenko, Phys.Rev.D 108 (2023), 023012

Effects of Hawking evaporation on PBH distributions
M. Mosbech, ZSCP, SciPost Phys. 13 (2022), 100

Apparent horizons of the Thakurta spacetime and the description of cosmological black holes
A. Kobakhidze, ZSCP, Eur.Phys.J.C 82 (2022) 4, 347

Cosmology of the companion-axion model: dark matter, gravitational waves, and primordial black holes
Z. Chen, A. Kobakhidze, C. A. J. O’hare, ZSCP, G. Pierobon (2021)

Phenomenology of the companion-axion model: photon couplings
Z. Chen, A. Kobakhidze, C. A. J. O’hare, ZSCP, G. Pierobon, Eur.Phys.J.C 82 (2022) 10, 940

Navigating the asteroid field: New evaporation constraints for primordial black holes as dark matter
ZSCP (2021)

Eliminating the LIGO bounds on primordial black hole dark matter
C. Boehm, A. Kobakhidze, C. A. J. O’hare, ZSCP, M. Sakellariadou, JCAP 03 (2021) 078

Probing Quadratic Gravity with Binary Inspirals
Y. Kim, A. Kobakhidze, ZSCP, Eur.Phys.J.C 81 (2021) 4, 362

Recordings, videos, et cetera

The gravity of particle physics: dark matter, black holes, and axions (PhD Thesis), University of Sydney (2022). Advisors: Archil Kobakhidze and Celine Boehm
Best PhD Thesis, 2022 School of Physics Research Awards

Late-forming primordial black holes
(50 min) Sydney CPPC Seminar Series, Apr. 2023

Probing the Universe at the Intersection of Gravity and Particle Physics
(25 min) Sydney CPPC Seminar Series, Oct. 2021

Cosmological PBHs as Dark Matter
(50 min) Sydney CPPC Seminar Series, June 2021

Dark Chatter #1: Primordial Black Holes with Markus Mosbech
Dark Chatter #3: Massive Neutrinos in N-body Simulations with Joe Chen
Dark Chatter #6: Muon Anomalies with Innes Bigaran
Dark Chatter #9: Simulating axion-like particles with Giovanni Pierobon

Virtual School of Physics Full-scale recreation of the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Accurate exterior and interior constructed in the Gather-Town virtual conferencing program.

Cosmological Black Holes (poster)
Black Holes Inside and Out, Sep. 2021
Second Centre Annual Workshop, ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, Dec. 2021

Talk Slides and Lecture Notes

An incomplete list, to avoid redundancy.

The art of making black holes (60 min)
Santa Cruz Center for Particle Physics, Oct. 2023

The theory of theory: a theoretical guide to writing your own theoretical physics paper (special ‘black holes as dark matter’ worked solutions included) (50 min), University of Sydney Physics Society, March 2022

The ‘Companion Axion’: Solving the Strong-Gravity-CP Problem
(20 min), Dark Sectors of AstroParticle Physics, Dec. 2021

Probing the Universe at the Intersection of Gravity and Particle Physics
(25 min) Sydney CPPC Seminar Series, Oct. 2021

The Strong CP Problem
(50 min) Dark matter lecture series, ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, Aug. 2021

Cosmological PBHs as Dark Matter
(50 min) Sydney CPPC Seminar Series, June 2021