General Physics Colloquium, Professor Aaron Pierce, University of Michigan

Title:  Will We See Dark Matter near the Weak Scale?

Host:  Maxim Perelstein

Abstract:  The Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (or WIMP) has been a leading dark matter candidate for decades.  We will review why this dark matter candidate is attractive, and we will discuss how null results in related experiments have (and in some cases have not) impacted the attractiveness of the WIMP paradigm.  We will critically examine representative viable WIMP dark matter candidates and how they might best be probed in future experiments.  We will comment on the landscape of non-WIMP dark matter candidates.