An Introduction to Particle Dark Matter

Abstract

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 Dark Matter searches and introduce the most promising candidates to the role of Dark Matter particle. a This article is based on a mini-course of 5 lectures delivered by Professor S.

Analytical study of charged boson stars with large scalar self-couplings

“…Thus, if /g 2 1, the perturbative approximation works well and the solutions up to the second order agree with the numerical results.…”

“…In the approximation scheme in the last section, we assumed (α ) 2 σ/g 2 . This corresponds to the omission of the energy density of the electric field as it is negligible compared with the energy density of the scalar field.…”

“…One of the great problems in astroparticle physics is the dark matter problem [1,2]. Many non-baryonic dark matter candidates have been supposed in the last several decades; for instance, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) have been studied along with development of phenomenological supersymmetric particle theory.…”

Doubly blind spots in scalar dark matter models

“…The physical origin and nature of the dark matter (DM) that permeates the universe and underpins the formation and evolution of structure, is at present unknown (see e.g. [1,2] for a review). A compelling possibility is that of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) [3], new massive particles, neutral or close-to-neutral under electromagnetic and strong interactions, but possibly charged, or mixed with particles which are charged under weak interactions.…”

Searching for Ultralight Dark Matter with Optical Cavities

“…Introduction-Despite overwhelming observational evidence for the existence of dark matter (DM), its composition and non-gravitational interaction with standard model fields and particles remain a mystery [1][2][3]. Assuming DM is composed of new particles or fields, the mass of the DM constituents can vary over a vast range of fifty orders of magnitude, see, e.g., [4].…”