Related papers: Is Cold Dark Matter Baryonic? Alternative Opinion
Galaxy clusters are the most massive, gravitationally-bound structures in the Universe, emerging through hierarchical structure formation of large-scale dark matter and baryon overdensities. Early galaxy ``proto-clusters'' are believed 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…
Fifteen years or so ago, it was commonly argued; ``If we want to believe the observations rather than our prejudice, we should take as our best bet that dark haloes are baryonic.'' Such a viewpoint is not often heard today. This…
A component of the dark matter could consist of two darkly charged particles with a large mass ratio and a massless force carrier. This `atomic' dark sector could behave much like the baryonic sector, cooling and fragmenting down to…
The standard theory of galaxy formation predicts that all galaxies should contain dark matter, yet a handful of recently discovered galaxies appear to lack it, challenging our understanding of galaxy formation. We investigate whether such…
The origins of matter and radiation in the universe lie in a Hot Big Bang. We present a number of well-motivated cosmologies in which the Big Bang occurs through a strong first order phase transition -- either at the end of inflation, after…
The cosmic microwave background and the cosmic expansion can be interpreted as evidence that the Universe underwent an extremely hot and dense phase about 14 Gyr ago. The nucleosynthesis computations tell us that the Universe emerged from…
We show that axinos produced in the early Universe in the decay of the lightest neutralinos are a natural candidate for cold dark matter. We argue that axinos may well provide the main component of the missing mass in the Universe because…
A simple and well-motivated explanation for the origin of dark matter is that it consists of thermal relic particles that get their mass entirely through electroweak symmetry breaking. The simplest models implementing this possibility…
Non-baryonic, or "dark," matter is believed to be a major component of the total mass budget of the universe. We review the candidates for particle dark matter and discuss the prospects for direct detection (via interaction of dark matter…
The most luminous galaxies in the present Universe are found at the centers of the most massive dark matter haloes, rich galaxy clusters. In the LCDM cosmology, such massive halo cores are present at redshift z=6 with a comoving number…
We show how recent data from observations of the cosmic microwave background may suggest the presence of additional radiation density which appeared after big bang nucleosynthesis. We propose a general scheme by which this radiation could…
The primordial abundances of deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium-7 probe the baryon density of the Universe only a few minutes after the Big Bang. Of these relics from the early Universe, deuterium is the baryometer of choice. After…
Galaxies are the basic structural element of the universe; galaxy formation theory seeks to explain how these structures came to be. I trace some of the foundational ideas in galaxy formation, with emphasis on the need for non-baryonic cold…
In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying…
The nonbaryonic dark matter of the Universe can consist of new stable charged leptons and quarks, if they are hidden in elusive "dark atoms" of composite dark matter. Such possibility can be compatible with the severe constraints on…
Evidence is summarized that suggests that when a protogalaxy collapses, a fraction $f$ of its gas fails to heat to the virial temperature, where $f$ is large for haloes less massive than the value $M^*$ associated with $L^*$ galaxies. Stars…
Hawking evaporation of primordial black holes (PBH) with masses ranging from $\sim 10^{-1}$ to $\sim 10^9$ g can generate the whole observed dark matter (DM) relic density. However, a second DM production mechanism, like freeze-out or…
The idea that dark matter could be made of stable relics of microscopic black holes is not new. In this article, we revisit this hypothesis, focusing on the creation of black holes by the scattering of trans-Planckian particles in the early…
The Universe's early thermal history is poorly constrained, and it is possible that it underwent a period of early matter domination driven by a heavy particle or an oscillating scalar field that decayed into radiation before the onset of…