Supersymmetric dark matter — direct searches

Abstract

The sensitivities of the experiments of direct search for WIMPs have remarkably improved in recent years, allowing now the exploration of sizeable regions of the physical parameter space of specific particle candidates for dark matter. This is the case of the neutralino for which some direct detection experiments are already capable of investigating significant features in domains of the supersymmetric parameter space. Some of these configurations, which are also under current exploration at LEP2, show interesting astrophysical and cosmological properties of the neutralino as the dark matter component of our Galaxy.