Astrophysical and Cosmological Probes of Dark Matter

Matts Roos

Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.

DOI: 10.4236/jmp.2012.329150                

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 been used to produce 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.

Keywords

pacs{95.35.+d, 98.65.-r, 98.62.-g, 98.80.-k, 98.90.+s}

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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