Published in Journal of Modern Physics, vol. 3, issue 29, pp. 1152-1171, 2012.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.3662

For a PDF version of the article, click here.

ASTROPHYSICAL AND COSMOLOGICAL PROBES OF DARK MATTER

Matts Roos


Department of Physics, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland


Abstract: Dark matter has been introduced to explain substantial mass deficits noted at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. Dark matter does not interact with baryonic matter except gravitationally, and therefore its effects are sensed only on the largest scales. Although it is still unknown whether dark matter consists of particles or of a field or has some other nature, it has a rich phenomenology. This review summarizes all the astrophysical and cosmological probes that have produced overwhelming evidence for its existence. The breadth of the subject does not permit details on the observational methods (the reference list then helps), thus the review is intended to be useful mainly to cosmologists searching to model dark matter.


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