Searches for Particle Dark Matter: An Introduction

Abstract

The identity of dark matter is one of the key outstanding problems in both particle and astrophysics. In this thesis, I describe a number of complementary searches for particle dark matter. I discuss how the impact of dark matter on stars can constrain its interaction with nuclei, focussing on main sequence stars close to the Galactic Centre, and on the first stars as seen through the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. The mass and annihilation cross-section of dark matter particles can be probed with searches for gamma rays produced in astronomical targets. Dwarf galaxies and ultracompact, primordially-produced dark matter minihalos turn out to be especially promising in this respect. I illustrate how the results of these searches can be combined with constraints from accelerators and cosmology to produce a single global fit to all available data. Global fits in supersymmetry turn out to be quite technically demanding, even with the simplest predictive models and the addition of complementary data from a bevy of astronomical and terrestrial experiments; I show how genetic algorithms can help in overcoming these challenges.

Textbook-level introductory review section of Stockholm University PhD thesis, posted by popular demand. Defended May 4, 2010. 84 pages; ISBN 978-91-7447-031-4

References in corpus (12)

• Primordial Nucleosynthesis in the Precision Cosmology Era
• CMB Constraints on WIMP Annihilation: Energy Absorption During the Recombination Epoch
• A blueprint for detecting supersymmetric dark matter in the Galactic halo
• Dark matter and the first stars: a new phase of stellar evolution
• Dark Matter Candidates: A Ten-Point Test
• Neutrino Constraints on the Dark Matter Total Annihilation Cross Section
• Gamma rays from ultracompact primordial dark matter minihalos
• A Profile Likelihood Analysis of the Constrained MSSM with Genetic Algorithms
• The Zero Age Main Sequence of WIMP burners
• Finding high-redshift dark stars with the James Webb Space Telescope
• Optimal angular window for observing Dark Matter annihilation from the Galactic Center region: the case of gamma-ray lines
• The DarkStars code: a publicly available dark stellar evolution package

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• Constraining interacting dark energy with CMB and BAO future surveys
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• Numerical simulation of Bohr-like and Thomson-like dark atoms with nuclei
• Proceedings to the 27th Workshop "What Comes Beyond the Standard Models" Bled, July 8-17, 2024
• Quark mass matrices inspired by a numerical relation
• Do we understand the internal spaces of second quantized fermion and boson fields, with gravity included? Relation with strings theories