What is neutralino dark matter?
Neutralinos are a prime candidate. Neutralinos are hypothetical particles that may explain what dark matter is made of. Dark matter accounts for about 83 percent of all matter in the universe.
What is the lightest neutralino?
A lightest neutralino of roughly 10–10000 GeV is the leading weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter candidate. Neutralino dark matter could be observed experimentally in nature either indirectly or directly.
Is neutralino a wimp?
The neutralino is a possibility for the lightest supersymmetric particle, and hence WIMPs.
What is the purpose of neutrinos?
Neutrinos play a role in many fundamental aspects of our lives; they are produced in nuclear fusion processes that power the sun and stars, they are produced in radioactive decays that provide a source of heat inside our planet, and they are produced in nuclear reactors.
What is an axion particle?
An axion (/ˈæksiɒn/) is a hypothetical elementary particle postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component of cold dark matter.
What are wimps made of?
weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), heavy, electromagnetically neutral subatomic particle that is hypothesized to make up most dark matter and therefore some 22 percent of the universe.
Is dark matter an axion?
In the early universe, the value of the axion field begins to oscillate back and forth. The energy stored in these oscillations is axion dark matter. It is known that dark matter of any kind can only interact very weakly with light, or else it would have been seen by scientists already.
Is dark matter made of neutrinos?
Neutrinos are a form of dark matter, because they have mass, and weakly interact with light. But neutrinos have such a small mass and high energy that they move through the universe at nearly the speed of light. For this reason, they are known as hot dark matter.