Dark matter searches

Abstract

One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the scales of galaxies up to the largest cosmological scales. The dark matter could be made of new, yet undiscovered elementary particles, with allowed masses and interaction strengths with normal matter spanning an enormous range. Axions, produced non-thermally in the early universe, and weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which froze out of thermal equilibrium with a relic density matching the observations, represent two well-motivated, generic classes of dark matter candidates. Dark matter axions could be detected by exploiting their predicted coupling to two photons, where the highest sensitivity is reached by experiments using a microwave cavity permeated by a strong magnetic field. WIMPs could be directly observed via scatters off atomic nuclei in underground, ultra low-background detectors, or indirectly, via secondary radiation produced when they pair annihilate. They could also be generated at particle colliders such as the LHC, where associated particles produced in the same process are to be detected. After a brief motivation and an introduction to the phenomenology of particle dark matter detection, I will discuss the most promising experimental techniques to search for axions and WIMPs, addressing their current and future science reach, as well as their complementarity.

10 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (24)

• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• Detection of An Unidentified Emission Line in the Stacked X-ray spectrum of Galaxy Clusters
• An unidentified line in X-ray spectra of the Andromeda galaxy and Perseus galaxy cluster
• The RAVE Survey: Constraining the Local Galactic Escape Speed
• Search for Low-Mass WIMPs with SuperCDMS
• Background model systematics for the Fermi GeV excess
• The Local Dark Matter Density
• Dark Matter and Collider Phenomenology of Universal Extra Dimensions
• Constraints on the Galactic Halo Dark Matter from Fermi-LAT Diffuse Measurements
• Dark Matter Evidence, Particle Physics Candidates and Detection Methods
• Benchmarks for Dark Matter Searches at the LHC
• Results on low mass WIMPs using an upgraded CRESST-II detector
• Direct dark matter detection: the next decade
• AMS-02 antiprotons, at last! Secondary astrophysical component and immediate implications for Dark Matter
• A realistic assessment of the CTA sensitivity to dark matter annihilation
• Solar and Atmospheric Neutrinos: Background Sources for the Direct Dark Matter Searches
• The CMSSM and NUHM1 after LHC Run 1
• First dark matter search results from the PandaX-I experiment
• What next for the CMSSM and the NUHM: Improved prospects for superpartner and dark matter detection
• Conceptual design and simulation of a water Cherenkov muon veto for the XENON1T experiment
• Prospects for dark matter searches in the pMSSM
• Profile likelihood maps of a 15-dimensional MSSM

Cited by in corpus (16)

• DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector
• gevolution: a cosmological N-body code based on General Relativity
• SUSY under siege from direct and indirect WIMP detection experiments
• Measuring the stability of fundamental constants with a network of clocks
• Search for WIMP Inelastic Scattering off Xenon Nuclei with XENON100
• The Search for Dark Matter
• Cosmology from non-minimal geometry-matter coupling
• Search for Bosonic Super-WIMP Interactions with the XENON100 Experiment
• Nonlocal Newtonian Cosmology
• The Relevance of Dynamical Friction for the MW/LMC/SMC Triple System
• Fuelling the search for light dark matter-electron scattering with spherical proportional counters
• The local dark sector. Probing gravitation's low-acceleration frontier and dark matter in the Solar System neighborhood
• Multilepton signals of heavier electroweakinos at the LHC
• Search for magnetic inelastic dark matter with XENON100
• Evolution of velocity dispersion along cold collisionless flows
• Effects of Threshold Energy on Reconstructions of Properties of Low-Mass WIMPs in Direct Dark Matter Detection Experiments