Related papers: The VERITAS Dark Matter Program
The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model unambigously predicts that a large number of haloes should survive as subhaloes when they are accreted into a larger halo. The CDM model would be ruled out if such substructures were shown not…
This work analyzes the detection prospects for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in dark matter (DM) density spikes around nearby supermassive black holes (SMBHs) by observations in very high energy gamma-ray band. Such spikes…
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…
After a brief introduction to dark matter in general and to WIMPs as candidates, we review recent results of direct dark matter searches. We concentrate on older and more recent hints pointing to light WIMP's with mass below 10 GeV.
Light cold dark matter consisting of weakly interacting slim (or sub-eV) particles (WISPs) has been in the focus of a large number of studies made over the past two decades. The QCD axion and axion-like particles with masses in the…
The inner region of the Milky Way halo harbors a large amount of dark matter (DM). Given its proximity, it is one of the most promising targets to look for DM. We report on a search for the annihilations of DM particles using $\gamma$-ray…
One of the predictions of the $\Lambda$CDM cosmological framework is the hierarchical formation of structure, giving rise to dark matter (DM) halos and subhalos. When the latter are massive enough they retain gas (i.e., baryons) and become…
Identifying the nature of dark matter (DM) has long been a pressing question for particle physics. In the face of ever-more-powerful exclusions and null results from large-exposure searches for TeV-scale DM interacting with nuclei, a…
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies of the Local Group are close satellites of the Milky Way characterized by a large mass-to-light ratio and are not expected to be the site of non-thermal high-energy gamma-ray emission or intense star formation.…
We discuss the extent to which models of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) Dark Matter (DM) at and above the electroweak scale can be probed conclusively in future high energy and astroparticle physics experiments. We consider…
Dark matter (DM) charged under a dark U(1) force appears in many extensions of the Standard Model, and has been invoked to explain anomalies in cosmic-ray data, as well as a self-interacting DM candidate. In this paper, we perform a…
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are excellent targets for indirect dark matter (DM) searches using gamma-ray telescopes because they are thought to have high DM content and a low astrophysical background. The sensitivity of these searches…
The dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) orbiting the Milky Way are widely regarded as systems supported by velocity dispersion against self-gravity, and as prime targets for the search for indirect dark matter (DM) signatures in the…
The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. Thus the direct dark matter search, consisting of detecting the recoiling nucleus, is central…
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…
Indirect detection experiments typically measure the flux of annihilating dark matter (DM) particles propagating freely through galactic halos. We consider a new scenario where celestial bodies "focus" DM annihilation events, increasing the…
In the last decade radio astronomy has emerged as a powerful technique for detecting signatures of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are particularly promising targets for these searches due to…
Astrophysical observations indicate that about 23% of the energy density of the universe is in the form of non-baryonic particles beyond the standard model of particle physics. One exciting and well motivated candidate is the lightest…
The combination of S-matrix unitarity and the dynamics of thermal freeze-out for massive relic particles (denoted here simply by WIMPs) implies a lower limit on the density of such particles, that provide a (potentially sub-dominant)…
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…