Related papers: The Search for Dark Matter
[A brief review intended for a general physics colloquium audience.] Astrophysicists now know that 80% of the matter in the universe is `dark matter', composed of neutral and weakly interacting elementary particles that are not part 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…
In Cosmology and in Fundamental Physics there is a crucial question like: where the elusive substance that we call Dark Matter is hidden in the Universe and what is it made of?, that, even after 40 years from the Vera Rubin seminal…
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,…
Dark matter is one of the pillars of the current standard model of structure formation: it is assumed to constitute most of the matter in the Universe. However, it can so far only be probed indirectly through its gravitational effects, and…
More than 90% of matter in the Universe could be composed of heavy particles, which were non-relativistic, or 'cold', when they froze-out from the primordial soup. I will review current searches for these hypothetical particles, both via…
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…
Dark matter is one of the main puzzles in fundamental physics and the goal of a diverse, multi-pronged research program. Underground and astrophysical searches search for dark matter particles in the cosmos, either by interacting directly…
Dark matter represents currently an outstanding problem in both cosmology and particle physics. In this review we discuss the possible explanations for dark matter and the experimental observables which can eventually lead to the discovery…
One of the great mysteries of contemporary science is dark matter, an exotic substance of unknown nature that, in theory, makes up about 27\% of the total mass-energy density of the universe, and which does not appear to emit, absorb, or…
Dark matter remains a mystery in fundamental physics. The only evidence for dark matter's existence is from gravitational interactions. We constructed a precision torsion balance experiment to search for non-gravitational, long-range…
We discuss an overlooked factor in dark matter studies. Namely, if massless particles are captured into a local structure and stop free streaming in the universe, they no longer lose energy by cosmological red-shift, and no longer smear out…
Dark matter constitutes $26\%$ of the total energy in our universe, but its nature remains elusive. Among the assortment of viable dark matter candidates, particles and fields with masses lighter than $40 \mathrm{eV}$, called ultralight…
There is plenty of evidence that most matter in the Universe is dark (non-luminous). Particle physics offers several possible explanations. In this talk I focus on cold dark matter; the most promising candidates are then axions and the…
A major fraction of the mass content of the universe is composed of dark matter (DM), i.e. particles not interacting significantly with electromagnetic radiation, with ordinary matter or self-interacting (cold dark matter). The axion is…
Dark matter has been introduced to explain mass deficits noted at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. Dark matter makes itself felt only through its…
The existence of dark matter (DM) was first noticed by Zwicky in the 1930s, but its nature remains one of the great unsolved problems of physics. A variety of observations indicate that it is non-baryonic and non-relativistic. One of the…
The concept of dark matter in the Universe and its components has been discussed in the 1930s by several authors, and in particular by Oort (1932) and Zwicky (1933). However, it is only in the 1970s that the existence of dark matter was…
Dark Matter (DM) is an elusive form of matter which has been postulated to explain astronomical observations through its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies, gravitational lensing of light around these, and through its imprint on…
We point out that current constraints on dark matter imply only that the majority of dark matter is cold and collisionless. A subdominant fraction of dark matter could have much stronger interactions. In particular, it could interact in a…