Related papers: Illuminating WISPs with Photons
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…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and strangelets are two classes of "exotic" particles not yet discovered, and in agreement with theoretical scenarios most probably produced in different early stages of evolution of the…
We investigate a new class of dark matter: superweakly-interacting massive particles (superWIMPs). As with conventional WIMPs, superWIMPs appear in well-motivated particle theories with naturally the correct relic density. In contrast to…
Several stellar systems (white dwarfs, red giants, horizontal branch stars and possibly the neutron star in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A) show a mild preference for a non-standard cooling mechanism when compared with theoretical…
Among the prominent low-mass dark matter candidates is the QCD axion but also other light and weakly interacting particles beyond the Standard Model. We review briefly the case for such dark matter and give an overview on most recent…
In the last years it has been realized, that extensions of the Standard Model may manifest itself also at meV energy scales. The low energy frontier is a rich complement to the conventional high-energy particle physics landscape. The search…
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…
The cold dark matter of the Universe may be comprised of very light and very weakly interacting particles, so-called WISPs. Two prominent examples are hidden photons and axion-like particles. In this note we propose a new technique to…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are one of very few probes of cosmology before Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). We point out that in scenarios in which the Universe evolves in a non-standard manner during and after WIMP kinetic…
The search for dark matter and physics beyond the Standard Model has grown to encompass a highly interdisciplinary approach. In this review, we survey recent searches for light, weakly-coupled particles - axions and dark photons - over the…
This document is based on lectures delivered at a recent COSMIC WISPers COST Action training school in Annecy in September 2025. They examine detection of weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs), specifically axions and high-frequency…
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are well-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates that couple to photons in external magnetic fields. The parameter space around $m_a \sim 50~\mu$eV remains largely unexplored by haloscope experiments. We…
Weakly interactive slim particles (WISPs), including the QCD axion, axion-like particles (ALPs), and hidden photons, are considered to be strong candidates for the dark matter carrier particle. The microwave cavity experiment WISPDMX is the…
Weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs) can be produced in stars through the conversion of non-thermal photons generated in nuclear reactions. Previous studies have generally treated these sources only at the level of their primary…
The status and prospects of the experimental efforts in the detection of Particle Dark Matter is reviewed. Emphasis is put in the direct searches for WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), outlining the various strategies and…
We illustrate, taking a top-down point of view, how axions and other very weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) arise in the course of compactification of the extra spatial dimensions in string/M-theory.
The dark photon is a massive hypothetical particle that interacts with the Standard Model by kinetically mixing with the visible photon. For small values of the mixing parameter, dark photons can evade cosmological bounds to be a viable…
Super-weakly interacting massive particles produced in the late decays of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are generic in large regions of supersymmetric parameter space and other frameworks for physics beyond the standard…
A light fermionic weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter is investigated by studying its minimal renormalizable model, where it requires a scalar mediator to have an interaction between the WIMP and standard model particles.…
Physics beyond the Standard Model predicts the possible existence of new particles that can be searched at the low energy frontier in the sub-eV range. The OSQAR photon regeneration experiment looks for "Light Shining through a Wall" from…