Related papers: Dark Matter and Background Light
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…
Dark matter, proposed decades ago as a speculative component of the universe, is now known to be the vital ingredient in the cosmos, eight times more abundant than ordinary matter, one quarter of the total energy density and the component…
Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…
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)…
We give an estimation of the masses of light dark matter particle and dark energy quasiparticle which can be extracted from the astrophysical data about the contributions of baryon, dark matter, and dark energy densities to the total…
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…
There is almost universal agreement among cosmologists that most of the matter in the Universe is dark, and there are very good reasons to believe that most of this dark matter must be nonbaryonic. The two leading candidates for this dark…
The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. Modern particle theories naturally provide viable cold dark matter candidates with masses in…
We have strong evidence on all cosmic scales, from galaxies to the largest structures ever observed, that there is more matter in the universe than we can see. Galaxies and clusters would fly apart unless they would be held together by…
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…
The current state searches for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) using both direct and indirect techniques is reviewed. Advances in recent years by various direct search experiments, utilising…
Our standard model of the Universe predicts the distribution of dark matter to $1\%$ at the scales needed for upcoming experiments, yet our predictions for how the luminous matter -- which has interactions besides gravity -- is distributed…
Cosmology and astroparticle physics give strongest possible evidence for the incompleteness of the Standard Model of particle physics. Leaving aside misterious dark energy, which may or may not be just the cosmological constant, two…
As one of the fundamental unknowns of our Universe, the mass of dark matter remains to be a topic of great interest. We consider the possibility of a time-variation of the dark matter mass. We study the cosmological constraints on a model…
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…
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…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), are a leading candidate for the dark matter that is observed to constitute ~25% of the total mass-energy density of the Universe. The direct detection of relic WIMPs (those produced during the…
In the late Universe, and on cosmological scales, dark matter is conventionally assumed to be collisionless, as a consequence of the strong existing bounds on dark matter interactions at the Cosmic Microwave Background last-scattering…
The nature of dark matter is one of the most pressing questions in modern cosmology. Much work has been focussed in the past upon probing potential particle dark matter via gamma-rays resulting from its annihilation or decay. These processs…
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…