The waning of the WIMP? A review of models, searches, and constraints.

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the best-motivated dark matter candidates. No conclusive signal, despite an extensive search program that combines, often in a complementary way, direct, indirect, and collider probes, has been detected so far. This situation might change in near future due to the advent of one/multi-TON Direct Detection experiments.

Case for an EeV Gravitino.

We consider the possibility that supersymmetry is broken above the inflationary mass scale and that the only "low" energy remnant of supersymmetry is the gravitino with a mass of the order of the EeV scale. The gravitino in this class of models becomes a candidate for the dark matter of the Universe. To avoid the overproduction of gravitinos from the decays of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle we argue that the supersymmetric spectrum must lie above the inflationary mass scale (M_{SUSY}>10^{-5}M_{P}∼10^{13}  GeV).

X-ray lines and self-interacting dark matter.

We study the correlation between a monochromatic signal from annihilating dark matter and its self-interacting cross section. We apply our argument to a complex scalar dark sector, where the pseudo-scalar plays the role of a warm dark matter candidate while the scalar mediates its interaction with the Standard Model. We combine the recent observation of the cluster Abell 3827 for self-interacting dark matter and the constraints on the annihilation cross section for monochromatic X-ray lines.

Searching for dark matter at colliders.

Dark Matter (DM) detection prospects at future [Formula: see text] colliders are reviewed under the assumption that DM particles are fermions of the Majorana or Dirac type. Although the discussion is quite general, one will keep in mind the recently proposed candidate based on an excess of energetic photons observed in the center of our Galaxy with the Fermi-LAT satellite. In the first part we will assume that DM interactions are mediated by vector bosons, [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text].

Gauge coupling unification and nonequilibrium thermal dark matter.

We study a new mechanism for the production of dark matter in the Universe which does not rely on thermal equilibrium. Dark matter is populated from the thermal bath subsequent to inflationary reheating via a massive mediator whose mass is above the reheating scale T(RH). To this end, we consider models with an extra U(1) gauge symmetry broken at some intermediate scale (M(int) ≃ 10(10)-10(12) GeV).