Particle Dark Matter: a Status

Higgs Centre colloquium

Particle Dark Matter: a Status

  • Event time: 1:00pm until 2:00pm
  • Event date: 9th November 2018
  • Speaker: Julien Lavalle (Lab. Univers et Particules de Montpellier)
  • Location: Higgs Centre Seminar Room, Room 4305,

Event details

The matter present in our universe is dominated by a component which has the properties of a non-relativistic collisionless fluid, dubbed dark matter (DM). This claim assumes that General Relativity (GR) holds on cosmological scales, currently a reasonable hypothesis, while extensions of GR are also investigated. Standard particle and nuclear physics tells us that DM cannot be made of known elementary particles. Yet, DM is a primary ingredient in our understanding of structure formation in the universe, as it seeds the gravitational wells that we are observing today as galaxies. This makes the question of the origin of DM an exciting challenge in fundamental physics. After an introduction on the "cold dark matter paradigm", I will review the current research on particle candidates that arise in extensions of the standard model of elementary particles, originally motivated by issues inherent to particle physics. I will present the main classes of candidates, the associated search strategies and current constraints, before discussing how the field has evolved toward more model-independent approaches by means of effective theories. I will also shortly discuss the status of primordial black holes.