Astrophysical and cosmological probes of dark matter

Abstract

Dark matter has been introduced to explain mass deficits noted at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. Dark matter makes itself felt only through its gravitational effects. This review summarizes phenomenologically all the astrophysical and cosmological probes that have been used to give evidence for its existence.Comment: 40 pages, 24 figures. Published in J. of Modern Physics 3, 1152, 2012. Minor corrections and additions in Versions 2 and 3. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0809.2783, arXiv:1103.2772, arXiv:1204.3377, arXiv:1111.4983, arXiv:0809.0898, arXiv:1004.1559, arXiv:0705.3323 by other author