Related papers: Dark Matter and LHC: What is the Connection?
While the paradigm of a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) has guided our search strategies for dark matter in the past decades, their null-results have stimulated growing interest in alternative explanations pointing towards…
The complementarity of direct, indirect and collider searches for dark matter has improved our understanding concerning the properties of the dark matter particle. I will review the basic concepts that these methods rely upon and highlight…
An abundance of astrophysical evidence indicates that the bulk of matter in the universe is made up of massive, electrically neutral particles that form the dark matter (DM). While the density of DM has been precisely measured, the identity…
Despite compelling arguments that significant discoveries of physics beyond the standard model are likely to be made at the Large Hadron Collider, it remains possible that this machine will make no such discoveries, or will make no…
With the start-up of the LHC, we can hope to find evidences for new physics beyond the Standard Model, and particle candidates for dark matter. Determining the parameters of the full underlying theory will be a long process requiring the…
One of the most popular classes of candidates for dark matter are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), i.e. particles possessing masses and couplings falling roughly within the electroweak scale. Apart from offering a natural…
Understanding the fundamental nature and properties of dark matter is a main goal of fundamental physics experiments. The LHC experiments seek to detect processes that could explain how dark matter is produced and how it interacts with…
Direct detection experiments are poised to detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The signals expected in these experiments depend on the ultra-local WIMP density and velocity distribution. Firstly…
An effective theory of dark matter offers an attractive framework for global analyses of dark matter. In the light of global fits we test the validity of the link between the non-relativistic dark matter annihilation, or the predicted relic…
The dark matter of our galactic halo may be constituted by elementary particles that interact weakly with ordinary matter (WIMPs). In spite of the very low counting rates expected for these dark matter particles to scatter off nuclei in a…
One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the…
A simple and well-motivated explanation for the origin of dark matter is that it consists of thermal relic particles that get their mass entirely through electroweak symmetry breaking. The simplest models implementing this possibility…
The ability of the LHC to make statements about the dark matter problem is considered, with a specific focus on supersymmetry. After reviewing the current strategies for supersymmetry searches at the LHC (in both CMS and ATLAS), some key…
We address the question of whether the upcoming generation of dark matter search experiments and colliders will be able to discover if the dark matter in the Universe has two components of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). We…
The existence of dark matter was suggested, using simple gravitational arguments, seventy years ago. Although we are now convinced that most of the mass in the Universe is indeed some non-luminous matter, we still do not know its…
Direct searches for dark matter lead to serious problems for simple models with stable neutral Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as candidates for dark matter. A possibility is discussed that new stable quarks and charged leptons…
We have strong evidence on all cosmic scales, from galaxies to the largest structures ever observed, that there is more matter in the universe than we can see. Galaxies and clusters would fly apart unless they would be held together by…
In the present universe visible and dark matter contribute comparable energy density although they have different properties. This coincidence can be elegantly explained if the dark matter relic density, originating from a dark matter…
The complementarity of direct, indirect and collider searches for dark matter has improved our understanding concerning the properties of the dark matter particle. In this short review, we present a step toward the fundamental nature of…
We consider a simplified model of fermionic dark matter which couples exclusively to the right-handed top quark via a renormalizable interaction with a color-charged scalar. We first compute the relic abundance of this type of dark matter…