Related papers: Kolmogorov complexity in the Milky Way and its red…
The distributions of dark matter and baryons in the Universe are known to be very different: the dark matter resides in extended halos, while a significant fraction of the baryons have radiated away much of their initial energy and fallen…
Dark matter coupled solely gravitationally can be produced through the decay of primordial black holes in the early universe. If the dark matter is lighter than the initial black hole temperature, it could be warm enough to be subject to…
The formation of the Milky Way is discussed within the context of the cold dark matter scenario. Several problems arise which can be solved if the Galaxy experienced an early phase of gas heating and decoupling from the dark matter…
In the thermal dark matter (DM) paradigm, primordial interactions between DM and Standard Model particles are responsible for the observed DM relic density. In Boehm et al. (2014), we showed that weak-strength interactions between DM and…
This chapter aims to present an introduction to current research on the nature of the cosmological dark matter and the origin of galaxies and large scale structure within the standard theoretical framework: gravitational collapse of…
The nature of dark matter is still unknown and one of the most fundamental scientific mysteries. Although successfully describing large scales, the standard cold dark matter model (CDM) exhibits possible shortcomings on galactic and…
In its first part, this paper summarizes recent work on the mass and shape of the Galactic dark halo. The second part presents a review of the large-scale structure of the Milky Way, and of the evidence that the inner Galaxy is dominated by…
In this paper a simple (i.e. free of fine-tuning, etc.) new mechanism for primordial black hole formation based on the collapse of large antimatter systems in the early Universe is introduced. A peculiarity of this process is that, compared…
The evolution of dark matter in central areas of galaxies is considered (the Milky Way is taken as an example). It is driven by scattering off of dark matter particles by bulge stars, their absorption by the supermassive black hole and…
The cold dark matter (CDM) model faces persistent challenges on small scales. In particular, taken at face value, the model significantly overestimates the number of satellite galaxies around the Milky Way. Attempts to solve this problem…
Cold Dark Matter (CDM) has become the standard modern theory of cosmological structure formation. Its predictions appear to be in good agreement with data on large scales, and it naturally accounts for many properties of galaxies. But…
Warm dark matter (WDM) has been proposed as an alternative to cold dark matter (CDM), to resolve issues such as the apparent lack of satellites around the Milky Way. Even if WDM is not the answer to observational issues, it is essential to…
The ubiquitous presence of dark matter in the universe is today a central tenet in modern cosmology and astrophysics. Ranging from the smallest galaxies to the observable universe, the evidence for dark matter is compelling in dwarfs,…
Dark sector theories naturally lead to multi-component scenarios for dark matter where a sub-component can dissipate energy through self-interactions, allowing it to efficiently cool inside galaxies. We present the first cosmological…
The Milky Way has a giant stellar structure in the solar neighborhood, which has a size of $\sim 1$ kpc, a mass of $\sim 10^6 {\rm M}_{\odot}$, and a ring-like distribution of young stars. Fundamental physical properties of this local…
The astronomical dark matter could be made of weakly interacting and massive particles. If so, these species would be abundant inside the Milky Way, where they would continuously annihilate and produce cosmic rays. Those annihilation…
In currently popular cosmological scenarios -- all variants of the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony -- some time beyond a redshift of 15, stars within the numerous small halos that condense with virial temperatures ~1e4 K created the first…
Primordial black holes may have been produced in the early stages of the thermal history of the Universe after cosmic inflation. If so, dark matter in the form of elementary particles can be subsequently accreted around these objects, in…
The Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by a circumgalactic medium (CGM) that may play a key role in galaxy evolution as the source of gas for star formation and a repository of metals and energy produced by star formation and nuclear activity.…
We explore some basic observational consequences of assuming that the dark matter in the Milky Way consists mainly of molecular clouds, and that cosmic rays can penetrate these clouds. In a favoured model of the clouds, this penetration…