Related papers: The moment of truth for WIMP Dark Matter
Multiple astrophysical and cosmological observations show that the majority of the matter in the universe is non-luminous. It is not made of known particles, and it is called dark matter. This is one of the few pieces of concrete…
The details of what constitutes the majority of the mass that makes up dark matter in the Universe remains one of the prime puzzles of cosmology and particle physics today - eighty years after the first observational indications. Today, it…
Numerous lines of evidence indicate that the matter content of the Universe is dominated by some unseen component. Determining the nature of this Dark Matter is one of the most important problems in cosmology. Weakly Interacting Massive…
Dark matter accounts for 26% of the mass-energy density of the Universe, however, its nature and origins remain the most important open questions in physics. The search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), one of the leading…
Recent breakthroughs in cosmology reveal that a quarter of the Universe is composed of dark matter, but the microscopic identity of dark matter remains a deep mystery. I review recent progress in resolving this puzzle, focusing on two…
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…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), are a leading candidate for the dark matter that is observed to constitute ~25% of the total mass-energy density of the Universe. The direct detection of relic WIMPs (those produced during the…
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…
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%…
Solving the Dark Matter enigma represents one of the key objectives of contemporary physics. Recent astrophysical and cosmological measurements have unambiguously demonstrated that ordinary matter contributes to less than 5 % of the energy…
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…
About one-fourth of the universe is thought to consist of dark matter. Yet there is no clear understanding about the nature of these particles. Commonly discussed dark matter candidates includes the so called WIMPs or weakly interacting…
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…
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…
The problem of the dark matter in the universe is reviewed. A short history of the subject is given, and several of the most obvious particle candidates for dark matter are identified. Particular focus is given to weakly interacting,…
WIMPs, weakly-interacting massive particles, have been leading candidates for particle dark matter for decades, and they remain a viable and highly motivated possibility. In these lectures, I describe the basic motivations for WIMPs,…
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…
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…
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…
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…