Related papers: The Dark Universe: The First Molecules
Aspects of primordial black holes, i.e. black holes formed in the early Universe, are reviewed. Special emphasis is put on their formation, their role as dark matter candidates and their manifold signatures, particularly through…
We review the features of Dark Matter as a particle, presenting some old and new instructive models, and looking for their physical implications in the early universe and in the process of structure formation. We also present a schematic of…
The universe would have been completely dark between the epoch of recombination and the development of the first non-linear structure. But at redshifts beyond 5 -- perhaps even beyond 20 -- stars formed within `subgalaxies' and created the…
Primordial Black Holes (PBH) could dominate in the early universe and, evaporating before Big bang Nucleosynthesis, can provide new freeze in mechanism of dark matter (DM) production. The proposed scenario is considered for two possible…
Over the past decade, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. The observational evidence for the existence of dark matter is reviewed: rotation curves of galaxies, weak lensing…
One of the greatest mysteries in astrophysics and cosmology is the nature and the origin of cold dark matter, which represents more than 84% of the mass in the universe. Dark matter reacts on and produces gravitational forces and governs…
There is strong evidence for a large fraction of dark matter in the Universe. Some of the evidence and candidates for dark matter are reviewed. Dark matter in spiral galaxies may be in the form of cold dense clouds of molecular hydrogen.…
Dark energy is the candidate that can produce effective negative pressure and make the galaxies and galaxy clusters move away from each other in an accelerated way. The structures of the Universe have evolved from some initial primordial…
The first stars in the universe form inside $\sim 10^6 M_\odot$ dark matter (DM) haloes whose initial density profiles are laid down by gravitational collapse in hierarchical structure formation scenarios. During the formation of the first…
One of the milestones in the cosmic history is the formation of the first luminous objects and Hydrogen reionization. The standard theory of cosmic structure formation predicts that the first generation of stars were born about a few…
We study the dynamics of first-order phase transition in the early Universe when it was $10-50 \mu s$ old with quarks and gluons condensing into hadrons. We look at how the Universe evolved through the phase transition in small as well as…
In currently popular cosmological scenarios -- all variants of the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony -- some time beyond a redshift of 15, stars within the numerous small halos that condense with virial temperatures ~1e4 K created the first…
Dark matter coupled solely gravitationally can be produced through the decay of primordial black holes in the early universe. If the dark matter is lighter than the initial black hole temperature, it could be warm enough to be subject to…
The hypothesis that cold dark matter consists of primordial superheavy particles, the decay of short lifetime component of which led to the observable mass of matter while long living component survived up to modern times manifesting its…
Quantifying the imprints of freeze-in dark matter (DM) on cosmological structures requires knowledge of its phase-space distribution. We investigate how variations in the cosmological history before nucleosynthesis, the "weather" of that…
There can exist a parallel `mirror' world which has the same particle physics as the observable world and couples the latter only gravitationally. The nucleosynthesis bounds demand that the mirror sector should have a smaller temperature…
We provide a pedagogical introduction to non-particle dark matter, focused on primordial black holes (PBHs), black holes that may form in the early Universe from large overdensities. First, we outline the key properties of PBHs and how they…
When the vacuum like energy of the Higgs potential within the standard model undergoes electroweak phase transition, an influx of entropy into the primordial plasma can lead to a significant dilution of frozen out dark matter density that…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) represent a natural candidate for one of the components of the dark matter (DM) in the Universe. In this review, we shall discuss the basics of their formation, abundance and signatures. Some of their…
Light, weakly-coupled dark sectors may be naturally decoupled in the early universe and enter equilibrium with the Standard Model bath during the epoch of primordial nucleosynthesis. The equilibration and eventual decoupling of dark sector…