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Lecture

Dark Matter Candidates

In courses (2)

PHYS-427: Relativity and cosmology I

Introduce the students to general relativity and its classical tests. ...

PHYS-428: Relativity and cosmology II

This course is the basic introduction to modern cosmology. It introduces students to the main concepts and formalism of cosmology, the observational status of Hot Big Bang theory and discusses major physical processes in the early Universe. ...

Description

This lecture discusses the possible candidates for dark matter, including sterile neutrinos, axions, and WIMPs. It explores the constraints on WIMPs and the implications of their properties on the Universe. The instructor also presents the concept of sterile neutrinos as a potential explanation for dark matter.

Instructor

Victor Gorbenko

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Particle physics: Standard Model

Astronomy

Astrophysics: Physical cosmology

Related concepts (32)

Weakly interacting massive particle

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are hypothetical particles that are one of the proposed candidates for dark matter. There exists no formal definition of a WIMP, but broadly, it is a new elementary particle which interacts via gravity and any other force (or forces), potentially not part of the Standard Model itself, which is as weak as or weaker than the weak nuclear force, but also non-vanishing in its strength.

Sterile neutrino

Sterile neutrinos (or inert neutrinos) are hypothetical particles (neutral leptons – neutrinos) that are believed to interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known, ordinary active neutrinos in the Standard Model, which carry an isospin charge of ± 1/ 2 and engage in the weak interaction. The term typically refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality (see right-handed neutrino), which may be inserted into the Standard Model.

Neutrino

A neutrino (njuːˈtriːnoʊ ; denoted by the Greek letter ν) is a fermion (an elementary particle with spin of 1 /2) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long thought to be zero. The rest mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the other known elementary particles excluding massless particles.

Particle Data Group

The Particle Data Group (PDG) is an international collaboration of particle physicists that compiles and reanalyzes published results related to the properties of particles and fundamental interactions. It also publishes reviews of theoretical results that are phenomenologically relevant, including those in related fields such as cosmology. The PDG currently publishes the Review of Particle Physics and its pocket version, the Particle Physics Booklet, which are printed biennially as books, and updated annually via the World Wide Web.

Neutrino oscillation

Neutrino oscillation is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which a neutrino created with a specific lepton family number ("lepton flavor": electron, muon, or tau) can later be measured to have a different lepton family number. The probability of measuring a particular flavor for a neutrino varies between three known states, as it propagates through space. First predicted by Bruno Pontecorvo in 1957, neutrino oscillation has since been observed by a multitude of experiments in several different contexts.

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