Related papers: WIMPZILLAS!
We study the effect of the elastic scattering on the non-thermal WIMP, which is produced by direct decay of heavy particles at the end of reheating. The non-thermal WIMP becomes important when the reheating temperature is well below the…
There is increasing evidence that conventional cold dark matter (CDM) models lead to conflicts between observations and numerical simulations of dark matter halos on sub-galactic scales. Spergel and Steinhardt showed that if the CDM is…
Understanding the nature of the Dark Matter (DM) is one of the current challenges in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Knowing the properties of the DM particle would shed light on physics beyond the Standard Model and even provide us with…
Producing an acceptable thermal relic abundance of dark matter with masses $\gg 10^2$ TeV is a challenge. We propose a novel mechanism where GeV-scale states establish a tiny thermal relic abundance for dark matter, which is later promoted…
Observational evidence for dark matter can be explained by Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). These dark matter particle candidates could indirectly be detected through the observation of signals produced as part of WIMP…
We present a scenario for non-thermal production of dark matter from evaporation of primordial black holes. A period of very early matter domination leads to formation of black holes with a maximum mass of $\simeq 2 \times 10^8$ g, whose…
The nature of the dark matter of the Universe is yet unknown and most likely is connected with new physics. The search for its composition is under way through direct and indirect detection. Fundamental physical aspects such as energy…
We investigate the interactions of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with nuclei in the human body. We are motivated by the fact that WIMPs are excellent candidates for the dark matter in the Universe. Our estimates use a 70 kg…
This is the mini-review on Dark Matter in the 2012 edition of the Particle Data Group's Review of Particle Properties. After briefly summarizing the arguments in favor of the existence of Dark Matter, we list possible candidates, ranging in…
The relic abundance of thermal dark matter particles is generally assumed to be inversely proportional to their annihilation rate, which is therefore constrained by the present matter density, <sigma v> ~ 10^{-26} Omega_{dm}^{-1} cm^3…
WIMPs, weakly-interacting massive particles, have been leading candidates for particle dark matter for decades, and they remain a viable and highly motivated possibility. In these lectures, I describe the basic motivations for WIMPs,…
The quest to identify the true nature of dark matter remains one of the most pressing challenges in modern physics. We present a novel approach to probe the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) paradigm by analyzing density…
Super-weakly interacting massive particles produced in the late decays of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are generic in large regions of supersymmetric parameter space and other frameworks for physics beyond the standard…
We investigate the production of neutralino dark matter in a cosmological scenario featuring an early matter dominated era ending at a relatively low reheating temperature. In such scenarios different production mechanisms of weakly…
We investigate the thermal relics as hot, warm and cold dark matter in $\mathscr{L}=\varepsilon^{2-2\beta}R^\beta+{16\pi}m_{\text{Pl}}^{-2}\mathscr{L}_m$ gravity, where $\varepsilon$ is a constant balancing the dimension of the field…
The axion arises in well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics and is regarded as an alternative to the weakly interacting massive particle paradigm to explain the nature of dark matter. In this contribution, we…
Current cosmological models and data suggest the existence of a Cold Dark Matter (DM) component, however the nature of DM particles remains unknown. A favored candidate for DM is a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) in the mass…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and strangelets are two classes of "exotic" particles not yet discovered, and in agreement with theoretical scenarios most probably produced in different early stages of evolution of the…
The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. The nature of the dark matter constituents cannot be determined till they are directly…
We evaluate the prospects for finding evidence of dark matter production at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider WIMPs and superWIMPs, weakly- and superweakly-interacting massive particles, and characterize their properties through…