Particle Dark Matter

Particle Dark Matter: WIMP Searches

• Accelerators: LHC: ATLAS detector with guest at CERN,
  
• Direct searches: CDMS: detector, fridge and icebox at the Soudan mine; interesting recent results
  DAMA new detector installation at Gran Sasso
  CRESST, CoGeNT, SuperCDMS, LUX
  the current state of the art
  
• Indirect (astrophysical) searches
  • cosmic rays: positrons
    PAMELA: excess positron fraction, confirmed by AMS
  • gamma-rays
    HESS TeV photons from the Galactic center
    Fermi/GLAST opens a new window on the GeV-TeV sky

Cosmological Inflation

Motivation: The Standard Cosmology and its Discontents

• successes
• questions/loose ends
  • >horizon problem
  • smoothness problem
  • flatness problem
  • lumpiness problem
  • monopole problem
• compare: Standard Model of Particle Physics
  • great qualitative, quantitative successes
  • but points beyond itself:
    supersymmetry
    grand unification
    quantum gravity/Planck epoch
    

Abstract Inflation

• the magic of acceleration
• interrelations among solutions to horizon, flatness, monopoles