Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (wimps)

Broad class of particles that were once in thermal equilibriumTerm used to describe physical or chemical stasis. Physical equilibrium may be divided into two types: static and dynamic. Static equilibrium occurs when the components of forces and torques acting in one direction are balanced by components of forces and torques acting in the opposite direction. A system in static with the early universeThat which contains and subsumes all the laws of nature, and everything subject to those laws; the sum of all that exists physically, including matter, energy, physical laws, space, and time. Also, a cosmological model of the universe. but were "cold," i.e., moving non-relativistically at the time of structure formationDevelopment of organized structures in the universe, ranging from galaxies to clusters to superclusters, and possibly beyond to huge filaments and voids.. WIMPs have nonzero rest mass and participate only in the weak nuclear interaction. WIMPs are expected to have collapsed into a roughly isothermalProcess that takes place without any change in temperature. Isothermal processes are often described as "slow.", spherical halo within which the visible portion of our galaxyConcentration of 10⁶ to 10¹² stars, dust and gas, that are gravitationally bound. Our galaxy contains ~2 × 10¹¹ stars. There are four main types of galaxies: • Elliptical
• Lenticular
• Spiral
• Irregular
resides, consistent with measurements of spiral
galaxy rotation curves. The original WIMP was a heavy Dirac neutrino, now experimentally ruled out. The neutralino predicted by supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model is the favorite WIMP nowadays. Such particles could fill space and provide gravitational forceOne of the four fundamental forces, gravitation is the force of mutual attraction that is exerted between massive bodies and between particles that have mass. Although gravitation is far weaker than the other three fundamental forces over short ranges, it is the dominant force on large scales because its range without any associated luminosityBasic property used to characterize stars, luminosity is defined as the total energy radiated by a star each second. An object’s luminosity is often compared to that of the Sun (Lsun = 4 × 1033 ergs/s = 3.9 × 1026 Watts). Luminosity has the same units as power (energy per. As such they are a candidate for dark matterForm of matter that does not emit light, absorb light, or otherwise interact with electromagnetic radiation. Its only interactions are gravitational and dark matter particles can clump under the force of gravity (unlike "dark energy" which is evenly distributed throughout space). The existence of dark matter has been inferred from. Another candidate WIMP is the axion. Direct detection of WIMPs is possible through their elastic scattering from nuclei. However, contributions of individual nucleons summed coherently yield extremely small WIMP-nucleus cross sections.