The Search for Dark Matter

Abstract

Overwhelming observational evidence indicates that most of the matter in the Universe consists of non-baryonic dark matter. One possibility is that the dark matter is Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that were produced in the early Universe. These relics could comprise the Milky Way's dark halo and provide evidence for new particle physics, such as Supersymmetry. After reviewing some of the evidence for dark matter and the WIMP hypothesis, I will describe the strategy for searching for WIMPs, along with a survey of the current status and outlook. In particular, dark matter searches have begun to explore the region of parameter space where SUSY particles could provide dark matter candidates. A broad range of technological developments promises to greatly extend these searches over the coming years.