Related papers: Dark Matter; Modification of f(R) or Wimps Miracle
In this pedestrian approach I give my personal point of view on the various problems posed by dark matter in the universe. After a brief historical overview I discuss the various solutions stemming from high energy particle physics, and the…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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 elucidation of the nature of dark matter is one of the challenging tasks in astroparticle physics. A brief overview on the different methods to search directly for dark matter in form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) is…
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…
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…
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…
Light WIMPs are dark matter particle candidates with weak scale interaction with the known particles, and mass in the GeV to 10's of GeV range. Hints of light WIMPs have appeared in several dark matter searches in the last decade. The…
More and more claims of having detected WIMP dark matter are being put forward. Some are discussed here, stressing the importance of exploiting distinctive signatures to ascertain their WIMP origin. The best signals for WIMP discovery are…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…