Related papers: Has cosmological dark matter been observed?
These lectures have been given to particle physicists, mostly experimentalists and very briefly and at a pedestrian level review the problems of dark matter. The content of the lectures is the following: 1. Introduction. 2. Cosmological…
The relic abundance of baryons - the only form of stable matter whose existence we are certain of - is a crucial parameter for many cosmological processes, as well as material evidence that there is new physics beyond the Standard Model. We…
Dark and baryonic matter contribute comparable energy density to the present Universe. The dark matter may also be responsible for the cosmic positron/electron excesses. We connect these phenomena with Dirac seesaw for neutrino masses. In…
I review the challenges and problems facing the standard cosmological model, involving an $\Omega=1$ Universe dominated by non-baryonic dark matter, which arise due to: age estimates of the universe, estimates of the baryon fraction of the…
Assuming the validity of the general relativistic description of gravitation on astrophysical and cosmological length scales, we analytically infer that the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology with Einsteinian cosmological constant, and a…
We note that the standard LCDM cosmological model continues to face fundamental problems. First, the model continues to depend wholly on two pieces of undiscovered physics, namely dark energy and cold dark matter. Then, the implied dark…
There is increasing evidence that the universe is dominated by dark energy of the type given by an invariant cosmological constant. Latest data also indicates that fundamental interaction couplings and particle masses have remained…
The vacuum is filled with complex scalar fields, such as the Higgs field. These fields serve as order parameters for superfluidity (quantum phase coherence over macroscopic distances), making the entire universe a superfluid. We review a…
We propose that the totality of dark matter in the universe might ascribe its origin to one of the key properties of cosmological inflation, that it may be eternal: regions that at the end of the primordial accelerated expansion of the…
Cosmological dark matter in the form of neutrinos with masses of up to a few electron volts is known as hot dark matter. After an historical review of the subject, this article considers constraints on hot dark matter from current data on…
The recent detection of microlensing of stars of LMC by compact objects in the halo of our galaxy suggests that our galaxy is surrounded by a non-luminous halo made of compact objects with mass of about $(0.03-0.5) \msun$. The rate of…
In the standard cosmological model, the Universe consists mainly of two invisible substances: vacuum energy with constant mass-density rho_v=\Lambda/(8pi G) (where Lambda is a `cosmological constant' originally proposed by Einstein and G is…
We present results from the analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB), large scale structure (galaxy redshift survey) and X-ray galaxy cluster (baryon fraction and X-ray luminosity function) data, assuming a geometrically flat…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
The anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation contains information about the contents and history of the universe. We report new limits on cosmological parameters derived from the angular power spectrum measured in the first…
Several independent cosmological data, collected within the last twenty years, revealed the accelerated expansion rate of the Universe, usually assumed to be driven by the so called dark energy, which, according to recent estimates,…
A rapid phase of accelerated expansion in the early universe, known as inflation, dilutes all matter except the vacuum induced quantum fluctuations. These are responsible for seeding the initial perturbations in the baryonic matter, the…
We suggest an alternative framework for interpreting the current state of the visible universe. Our approach is based on a dynamical ``Cosmological Constant'' and the starting point is that a decaying vacuum produces matter. As we point…
It is demonstrated that entropy and its density play a significant role in solving the problem of the vacuum energy density (cosmological constant) of the Universe and hence the dark energy problem. Taking this in mind, two most popular…
The fact that the energy densities of dark energy and matter are similar currently, known as the coincidence problem, is one of the main unsolved problems of cosmology. We present here a model in which a spatial curvature of the universe…