07-09-2003, 03:52 PM
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Moderator - Science Discussions
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Providence, RI, USA
Posts: 9,908
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New class of superweak particles as possible dark matter candidate
http://www.today.uci.edu/news/releas...l.asp?key=1009
Quote:
A UC Irvine study has revealed a new class of cosmic particles that may shed light on the composition of dark matter in the universe.
These particles, called superweakly interacting massive particles, or superWIMPs, may constitute the invisible matter that makes up as much as one-quarter of the universe’s mass.
UCI physicists Jonathan Feng, Arvind Rajaraman and Fumihiro Takayama report that these new superWIMPs have radically different properties from weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which many researchers have long looked to as the leading dark matter candidate. The study was posted July 3 on the online version of Physical Review Letters (http://prl.aps.org/).
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Like WIMPs, superWIMPs only exist theoretically. In fact, because superWIMPs do not have weak-force interactions, they are predicted to be impossible to detect by conventional experimental methods. But Feng and his colleagues point to some alternative tests to prove their existence. They found that observations of old stars and the cosmic microwave background of the universe can reveal clues for superWIMPs.
“One place to look for evidence is in the cosmic microwave background, which in essence is the afterglow of the Big Bang,” Feng said. “This background is very uniform. But according to our theory, WIMP decay would set loose a zoo of particles that would create deviations in this background. If such deviations are found, they would provide a particle fingerprint for the existence of superWIMP dark matter.”
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Here's an abstract of the paper:
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0306024
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