Related papers: Yet Another Introduction to Dark Matter
Dark matter is a fundamental constituent of the universe, which is needed to explain a wide variety of astrophysical and cosmological observations. Although the existence of dark matter was first postulated nearly a century ago and its…
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,…
We review the features of Dark Matter as a particle, presenting some old and new instructive models, and looking for their physical implications in the early universe and in the process of structure formation. We also present a schematic of…
A brief overview is given of the phenomenology of particle dark matter and the properties of some of the most widely studied dark matter candidates. Recent developments in direct and indirect dark matter searches are discussed.
Although well established observations on cosmological, cluster, and galactic scales strongly suggest the existence of dark matter (DM), our understanding of its non-gravitational properties is still lacking. I review basic aspects of…
The identification of a solution to the dark matter problem has many arrows to its bow: if dark matter is a new elementary particle, both laboratory experiments and astrophysics can bring relevant and complementary pieces of information,…
The majority of the matter in the universe is still unidentified and under investigation by both direct and indirect means. Many experiments searching for the recoil of dark-matter particles off target nuclei in underground laboratories…
In this review article the current status of particle dark matter is addressed. We discuss the main theoretical extensions of the standard model which allow to explain dark matter in terms of a (yet undiscovered) elementary particle. We…
The nature of dark matter is one of the most pressing questions in particle physics. Yet all our present knowledge of the dark sector to date comes from its gravitational interactions with astrophysical systems. Moreover, astronomical…
In the first section, I will try to convey a sense of the variety of observational inputs that tell us about the existence and the spatial distribution of dark matter in the universe. In the second section, I will briefly review the four…
As cosmology has entered a phase of precision experiments, the content of the universe has been established to contain interesting and not yet fully understood components, namely dark energy and dark matter. While the cause and exact nature…
The nature of the dark matter in the Universe is one of the hardest unsolved problems in modern physics. Indeed, on one hand, the overwhelming indirect evidence from astrophysics seems to leave no doubt about its existence; on the other…
After a short review of the arguments for the existence of Particle Dark Matter in the Universe, I list the most plausible candidates provided by particle physics, i.e. neutrinos, axions, and WIMPs. In each case I briefly describe how to…
Dark matter is among the most important open problems in both astrophysics and particle physics. We review the status of art of dark matter search at theoretical and experimental level discussing also alternative hypotheses.
Astronomical observations from small galaxies to the largest scales in the universe can be consistently explained by the simple idea of dark matter. The nature of dark matter is however still unknown. Empirically it cannot be any of the…
These lecture notes aim to provide an introduction to dark matter from the perspective of astrophysics/cosmology. We start with a rapid overview of cosmology, including the evolution of the Universe, its thermal history and structure…
The complementarity of direct, indirect and collider searches for dark matter has improved our understanding concerning the properties of the dark matter particle. I will review the basic concepts that these methods rely upon and highlight…
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…
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…
The nature of cosmological dark matter finds its explanation in physics beyond the Standard model of elementary particles. The landscape of dark matter candidates contains a wide variety of species, either elusive or hardly detectable in…