Physikalisches Kolloquium
April 17, 2018 at 4 p.m. c.t. in HS KPHProf. Dr. Hans Jockers
Institut für Physik
jockers@uni-mainz.de
Prof. Dr. Concettina Sfienti
Institut für Kernphysik
sfienti@uni-mainz.de
Dark Matter constitutes more than 80% of the total amount of matter in the Universe: we know it exists, we can guess some of its properties, but we have no idea of what it actually is. This is humbling and it constitutes one of the most pressing issues in cosmology and particle physics today. And indeed the search is not easy: from building ultra-clean experiments within some of the deepest mines on Earth, to installing giant detectors on board the International Space Station, to scrutinizing the products of the most energetic particle collider ever built (the Large Hadron Collider of CERN, near Geneva), many subdisciplines are employed to the purpose. At the same time, theorists are working frantically to build a coherent theory capable of explaining all the observed properties.
The talk will review the basic knowledge available on Dark Matter today and then explore the recent phenomenological and theoretical directions.