Related papers: Cosmic Deconstructionism
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can be gravitationally captured by the Sun and trapped in its core. The annihilation of those WIMPs into Standard Model particles produces a spectrum of neutrinos whose energy distribution is…
The nature of the dark matter in the halo of our Galaxy is still largely unknown. The microlensing events found so far towards the Large Magellanic Cloud suggest that at most about 20% of the halo dark matter is in the form of MACHOs…
The evolution of the Universe between inflation and the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis is difficult to probe and largely unconstrained. This ignorance profoundly limits our understanding of dark matter: we cannot calculate its thermal…
The observed excess of gravitational forces in galaxies and galactic clusters is usually referred as the existence of "dark matter particles" of unknown origin. An alternative explanation of the dark matter effect is presented here by…
Although a direct interaction between WIMP CDM candidates and scalar Quintessence fields (sources of Dark Energy) poses severe phenomenological threats, yet it is possible that the presence of Quintessence produces profound deviations in…
Multiple astrophysical and cosmological observations show that the majority of the matter in the universe is non-luminous. It is not made of known particles, and it is called dark matter. This is one of the few pieces of concrete…
In these lectures we first concentrate on the cosmological problems which, hopefully, have to do with the new physics to be probed at the LHC: the nature and origin of dark matter and generation of matter-antimatter asymmetry. We give…
In an introductory manner, the nature of dark energy is addressed, how it is observed and what further tests are needed to reconstruct its properties. Several theoretical approaches to dark energy will be discussed. Finally, the dark…
Astronomical observations strongly suggest that our universe is now accelerating and contains a substantial admixture of dark vacuum energy. Using numerical simulations to study this newly consolidated cosmological model (with a constant…
The weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) often serves as a candidate for the cold dark matter, however when produced non-thermally it could behave like warm dark matter. In this paper we study the properties of the $\gamma$-ray…
We investigate various dark energy models by taking into account the thermal effects induced from Hawking radiation on the apparent horizon of the Universe, for example near a finite-time future singularity. If the dark energy density…
Dark matter appears in two forms as a consequence of the fluid mechanics of self-gravitational condensation. Condensation occurs primarily on non-acoustic nuclei rather than on the acoustic nuclei of the Jeans (1902) criterion, leading to a…
Here we consider a scenario in which dark energy is associated with the apparent area of a surface in the early universe. In order to resemble the cosmological constant at late times, this hypothetical reference scale should maintain an…
The astronomical dark matter could be made of weakly interacting and massive particles. If so, these species would be abundant inside the Milky Way, where they would continuously annihilate and produce cosmic rays. Those annihilation…
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 inability of standard non-interacting cold dark matter (CDM) to account for the small scale structure of individual galaxies has led to the suggestion that the dark matter may undergo elastic and/or inelastic scattering. We simulate 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…
Accounting for large-scale structure in our universe will require not only reasonably accurate mathematical models of its cosmogony, topology and cosmology, but also a more deeper understanding of our fundamental physical concepts of space,…
It is discussed how the ideas of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, conceived long ago during the nineteenth century, underly why cosmological dark matter exists and originated in the first three years of the universe in the form…
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…