Chapters
- Zwicky’s legacy
- The historical discovery
- Galaxies and clusters of galaxies
- Cosmological observations
- The bestiary of dark matter species
- Following Charles Darwin
- Kaluza-Klein particles in extra-D theories
- The supersymmetric realm
- The WIMP miracle
- Particle astrophysics and the search for dark matter particles
- Direct detection experiments
- Indirect searches and cosmic rays
- The positron excess
- Dark matter searches at the LHC
Abstract
| Large
amounts of invisible matter in the universe have been discovered in
1933 when the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky measured the velocity
dispersion of individual galaxies inside the Coma cluster. Zwicky
determined for the first time the dynamical mass of that system and
obtained a value more than a hundred times larger than the visible
counterpart inferred from the luminosity of galaxies. The astronomical
dark matter puzzle originates from this measurement. Since then, it has
been steadily confirmed by a series of refined observations, performed
at very different scales, which I will review in the first chapter. The
non-baryonic nature of dark matter is one of the most intriguing
results and has been confirmed by the Planck satellite. In the second
part, I will concentrate on the bestiary of candidates provided by the
theoretical extensions of the standard model of particle physics. After
a brief introduction to supersymmetry and Kaluza-Klein theories, I will
pay particular attention to the WIMP miracle. Chapter 3 is devoted to
the searches for dark matter candidates, with particular emphasis on
weakly interacting massive species, dubbed WIMPs. Direct and indirect
detections will be reviewed. An excess in the energy distribution of
cosmic ray positrons has been discovered in 2008 above 10 GeV, raising
the tremendous hope that WIMPs were not just a fantasy. Interpreting
that excess as a smoking gun evidence for dark matter particles is very
tempting. However, that possibility has by now fallen into disfavor on
the basis of arguments which I will discuss. The final part of the
lecture deals with the results collected during the first run of the
large hadron collider (LHC) and the lack of direct evidence for physics
beyond the standard model. I will discuss how this impacts on the
models of dark matter and the WIMP properties. |
Bibliography
- For a review on the astronomical evidences for dark matter, see for instance
- F. Zwicky, Helvetica Physica Acta 6, 110 (1933)
- http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept09/Einasto/frames.html
- http://www.learner.org/courses/physics/unit/pdfs/unit10.pdf
- For WIMP production in the early universe, see for instance
- B. W. Lee and S. Weinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 39, 165 (1977)
- P. Binetruy, G. Girardi and P. Salati, Nucl. Phys. B237, 285 (1984)
- https://lapth.cnrs.fr/micromegas/
- For direct and indirect searches for dark matter species, see for instance
- http://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.4495.pdf
- http://pos.sissa.it//archive/conferences/049/009/cargese_009.pdf
- http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.1092.pdf
- For dark matter searches at the LHC, see for instance
- http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/phenocond/pdf/collider-dm.pdf
- http://moriond.in2p3.fr/J12/transparencies/14_Wednesday_am/malik.pdf
- https://kicp-workshops.uchicago.edu/DM-LHC2013/presentations.php
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