Candidates for non-baryonic dark matter

This report is a brief review of the efforts to explain the nature of non-baryonic dark matter and of the studies devoted to the search for relic particles. Among the different dark matter candidates, special attention is devoted to relic neutralinos, by giving an overview of the recent calculations of its relic abundance and detection rates in a wide variety of supersymmetric schemes.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, typeset with ReVTeX, uses espcrc2.sty. Invited review talk presented at "Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2001)" Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, September 8-12, 2001. References added. The paper may also be downloaded from http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/proceedings/taup01.ps.g

Particle dark matter searches in the anisotropic sky

Anisotropies in the electromagnetic emission produced by dark matter annihilation or decay in the extragalactic sky are a recent tool in the quest for a particle dark matter evidence. We review the formalism to compute the two-point angular power spectrum in the halo-model approach and discuss the features and the relative size of the various auto- and cross-correlation signals that can be envisaged for anisotropy studies. From the side of particle dark matter signals, we consider the full multi-wavelength spectrum, from the radio emission to X-ray and gamma-ray productions. We discuss the angular power spectra of the auto-correlation of each of these signals and of the cross-correlation between any pair of them. We then extend the search to comprise specific gravitational tracers of dark matter distribution in the Universe: weak-lensing cosmic shear, large-scale-structure matter distribution and CMB-lensing. We have shown that cross-correlating a multi-wavelength dark matter signal (which is a direct manifestation of its particle physics nature) with a gravitational tracer (which is a manifestation of the presence of large amounts of unseen matter in the Universe) may offer a promising tool to demonstrate that what we call dark matter is indeed formed by elementary particles.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures. Prepared as inaugural article for Frontiers in High-Energy and Astroparticle Physics. v2: few comments added, to appear in Frontiers (Hypothesis and Theory Article

Cold Dark Matter and Neutralinos

Neutralinos are natural candidates for cold dark matter in many realizations of supersymmetry. We briefly review our recent results in the evaluation of neutralino relic abundance and direct detection rates in a class of supergravity models.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, uses espcrc2.sty. Proc. of "Sources and detection of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe (DM2002)". The version on the archive has low-resolution figures. The paper with high-resolution figures can be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/proceedings/marinadelrey02.ps.gz or through http://www.to.infn.it/astropart

Gravitational Effects on the Neutrino Oscillation

The propagation of neutrinos in a gravitational field is studied. A method of calculating a covariant quantum-mechanical phase in a curved space-time is presented. The result is used to calculate gravitational effects on the neutrino oscillation in the presence of a gravitational field. We restrict our discussion to the case of the Schwartzschild metric. Specifically, the cases of the radial propagation and the non-radial propagation are considered. A possible application to gravitational lensing of neutrinos is also suggested.Comment: 15 pages, RevTex, No figures. Minor modifications and some typos correcte

Relic neutralinos: update on neutralino-nucleon scalar cross-section

We discuss the effect induced on the neutralino-nucleon scalar cross-section by the present uncertainties in the values of the quark masses and of the quark scalar densities in the nucleon. We examine the implications of this aspect on the determination of the neutralino cosmological properties, as derived from measurements of WIMP direct detection. We show that, within current theoretical uncertainties, the DAMA annual modulation data are compatible with a neutralino as a major dark matter component, to an extent which is even larger than the one previously derived

Astroparticle physics view on supersymmetry

The particle physics interpretation of the missing-mass, or darkmatter, problem of cosmological and astrophysical nature is going to be posed under deep scrutiny in the next years. From the particle physics side, accelerator physics will deeply test theoretical ideas of new physics beyond the Standard Model, where a particle physics candidate to dark matter is often naturally obtained. From the astrophysical side, many probes are already providing a great deal of independent information on the signals which can be produced by the galactic or extra-galactic dark matter. The ultimate hope is in fact to be able to disentangle a dark matter signal from the various sources of backgrounds and to extract a coherent picture of new physics from the accelerator physics, astrophysics and cosmology side. A very ambitious and far-reaching project, indeed