Related papers: Dark Matter Candidates and Searches
This paper is a broad-band review of the current status of non-baryonic dark matter research. I start with a historical overview of the evidences of dark matter existence, then I discuss how dark matter is distributed from small scale to…
It is now, generally, believed that the presence of some form of dark matter is essential to explain the flat rotation curves of galaxies, and anomalous large velocities of galaxies in the clusters and superclusters. This dark matter turns…
The search for dark matter has been ongoing for decades within both astrophysics and particle physics. Both fields have employed different approaches and conceived a variety of methods for constraining the properties of dark matter, but…
Dark sector, constituting about 95 percent of the Universe, remains the subject of numerous studies. There are lots of models dealing with the cause of the effects assigned to dark matter and dark energy. This brief review is devoted to the…
For the first time, we have a plausible, complete accounting of matter and energy in the Universe. Expressed a fraction of the critical density it goes like this: neutrinos, between 0.3% and 15%; stars, 0.5%; baryons (total), 5%; matter…
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…
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 nature of dark matter is one of the open problems of the Standard Model of particle physics. Despite the great experimental efforts, we have not yet found a positive signal of its interactions with ordinary matter. One possible…
The quest for the elusive dark matter (DM) that permeates the Universe (and in general the search for signatures of Physics beyond the Standard Model at astronomical scales) provides a unique opportunity and a tough challenge to the…
The indirect detection of dark matter annihilation and decay using observations of photons, charged cosmic rays, and neutrinos offers a promising means of identifying the particle nature of this elusive component of the universe. The last…
Dark matter is thought to make up most of the matter density of the Universe, yet its true nature remains uncertain. Among dark matter theories, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are a prominent candidate for dark matter because…
To the astrophysicist faced with the puzzle of dark matter, this one appears under two different aspects: on the one hand in cosmology, i.e. at very large scales, where it seems to be made of a bath of particles; on the other hand at the…
Cosmological measurements indicate that a large component of non-visible gravitating matter is present in the universe. A common hypothesis for its origin is a weakly interacting, massive particle. Annihilations or decays of such particles…
The current standard model of cosmology assumes that the majority of matter in the Universe is made of dark matter, and that the latter is fundamentally different from ordinary matter. Dark matter can in principle explain the rotation of…
The axion has emerged in recent years as a leading particle candidate to provide the mysterious dark matter in the cosmos, as we review here for a general scientific audience. We describe first the historical roots of the axion in the…
We review some recent determinations of the amount of dark matter on galactic, cluster, and large scales, noting some puzzles and their possible resolutions. We discuss the interpretation of big bang nucleosynthesis for dark matter, and…
Several aspects of the motivation for particle dark matter search are introduced. The experimental principles and present state of the most important experiments are presented. Direct searches for WIMPs are explained in some detail,…
Dark matter (comprising a quarter of the Universe) is usually assumed to be due to one and only one weakly interacting particle which is neutral and absolutely stable. We consider the possibility that there are several coexisting…
Among the great mysteries that physics has not yet solved are undoubtedly those of dark energy and dark matter. In this chapter we deal with the first of them. We will expound in detail the motivations that led to hypothesise the existence…
We review the theoretical framework underlying models of asymmetric dark matter, describe astrophysical constraints which arise from observations of neutron stars, and discuss the prospects for detecting asymmetric dark matter.