An Introduction to Particle Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper reviews particle dark matter, discussing models, physical implications, search strategies, and promising candidates, providing a comprehensive overview of the field's current understanding and directions.

Contribution

It offers a broad overview of dark matter particle models, their implications, and search strategies, including new insights into promising candidates.

Findings

Identification of key dark matter candidates

Implications for early universe physics

Guidance for future dark matter searches

Abstract

We review the features of Dark Matter as a particle, presenting some old and new instructive models, and looking for their physical implications in the early universe and in the process of structure formation. We also present a schematic of Dark Matter searches and introduce the most promising candidates to the role of Dark Matter particle.