Related papers: New Class of Dark Matter Objects and their Detecti…

We know that dark matter constitutes 85% of all the matter in the Universe, but we do not know of what it is made. Amongst the many Dark Matter candidates proposed, WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) occupy a special place, as…

These lectures are intended to provide a brief pedagogical review of dark matter for the newcomer to the subject. We begin with a discussion of the astrophysical evidence for dark matter. The standard weakly-interacting massive particle…

This is the mini-review on Dark Matter in the 2012 edition of the Particle Data Group's Review of Particle Properties. After briefly summarizing the arguments in favor of the existence of Dark Matter, we list possible candidates, ranging in…

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…

Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…

Dark Matter is one of the most intriguing riddles of modern astrophysics. The Standard Cosmological Model implies that only 4.5% of the mass-energy of the Universe is baryonic matter and the remaining 95% is unknown. Of this remainder, 22%…

An ever-increasing body of evidence suggests that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) constitute the bulk of the matter in the Universe. We illustrate how experimental data, dimensional analysis and Standard Model particle physics…

This write--up gives a rather elementary introduction into particle physics aspects of the cosmological Dark Matter puzzle. A fairly comprehensive list of possible candidates is given; in each case the production mechanism and possible ways…

One of the most puzzling problems of modern physics is the identification of the nature a non-relativistic matter component present in the universe, contributing to more than 25$\%$ of the total energy budget, known as Dark Matter. Weakly…

Although dark matter makes up 80% of the gravitational mass of our Galaxy, its composition is not known. One hypothesis is that dark matter consists of massive particles called WIMPs. WIMPs are expected to accumulate and coannihilate in the…

We propose that dark matter is composed of particles that naturally have the correct thermal relic density, but have neither weak-scale masses nor weak interactions. These WIMPless models emerge naturally from gauge-mediated supersymmetry…

Astrophysical observations provide strong evidence that more than 80% of all matter in the Universe is in the form of dark matter (DM). Two leading candidates of particles beyond the Standard Model that could constitute all or a fraction of…

There is almost universal agreement among cosmologists that most of the matter in the Universe is dark, and there are very good reasons to believe that most of this dark matter must be nonbaryonic. The two leading candidates for this dark…

Progress in observational cosmology over the past five years has established that the Universe is dominated dynamically by dark matter and dark energy. Both these new and apparently independent forms of matter-energy have properties that…

It is now widely accepted that most of mass--energy in the universe is unobserved except by its gravitational effects. Baryons make only about 4% of the total, with "dark matter" making up about 23% and the "dark energy" responsible for the…

The nature of the cosmic dark matter is unknown. The most compelling hypothesis is that dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the 100 GeV mass range. Such particles would annihilate in the galactic halo,…

For many working in particle physics and cosmology successful discovery and characterisation of the new particles that most likely explain the non-baryonic cold dark matter, known to comprise the majority of matter in the Universe, would be…

Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…

The identity of dark matter is a question of central importance in both astrophysics and particle physics. In the past, the leading particle candidates were cold and collisionless, and typically predicted missing energy signals at particle…

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the favored candidates for cold dark matter in the universe. The phenomenology of supersymmetric WIMPs has been quite developed during recent years. However, there are other…