hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
The Fifth HEIDELBERG International Conference on Dark Matter in Astro- and Particle Physics, DARK 2004, took place at Texas A&M University, College Station Texas, USA, October 3 - 9, 2004. It was, after Cape Town 2002, the second conference of this series held outside Germany. The earlier meetings, starting in 1996, were held in Heidelberg.
Dark Matter is still one of the most exciting and central fields of astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. The conference covered, as usual for this series, a large range of topics, theoretical and experimental.
Theoretical talks covered SUSY/SUGRA phenomenology, which provides at present a preferred theoretical framework for
the existence of cold dark matter. Also included were other possible explanations of dark matter such as SUSY Q balls,
exciting New Symmetries, etc.
The most important experiments in the underground search for cold and hot dark matter were presented. Talks describing the current experimental dark matter bounds, what might be obtained in the near future, and the reach of future large
(i. e. one ton) detectors were given. The potential of future colliders to correlate accelerator physics with dark matter searches was also outlined. Thus the reader will be able to see the present status and future prospects in the search for dark matter.
The exciting astronomical evidence for dark matter and corresponding observations concerning the Milky Way's black hole, high-redshift clusters, wakes in dark matter halos were other important topics at the conference.
A considerable fraction of the conference was taken by presentations on cosmology and bayogenesis. The status and
perspectives of the search for dark energy from supernovae, leptonic CP violation and baryon asymmetry and a new type of baryogenesis, Q-genesis, were discussed. Finally a possible special property of neutrinos (which are known now to
contribute to hot dark matter) in dense matter - neutrino spin light - was presented.
We are confident that the present Proceedings give a useful overview of this exciting field of research, and its fundamental connections to various frontier disciplines of particle physics and cosmology. We hope that this book may also be a kind of handbook for students.
The organizers express their thanks to all colleagues from many countries, who contributed so actively to the success of the meeting. We also thank those speakers who helped carry our field into public attention by the evening lectures open to the public given during the conference.
Thanks go to the George P. and Cynthia W. Mitchell Institute For Fundamental Physics of Texas A&M University and the Max
Planck Institut fuer Kernphysik in Heidelberg for their generous financial support. We thank all people who contributed in one way or another to the organization of the conference, and in creating a pleasant and inspiring atmosphere during the conference. We are indebted in particular to Beverly Guster, Ron Bryan, Ching-Ming Chen, James Dent and Gang Zhao for their help in the scientific organisation. Particular thanks go to the Scientific Secretary, Dr. Irina Krivosheina, who unfortunately could not participate because of visa problems. To the latter we are also indebted for preparing this Proceedings volume.
Last but not least, one of the Cochairmen would like to give his personal thanks to Professor Richard Arnowitt for making
this successful event possible, while the other Cochairman would like to thank Professor Hans V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus for choosing Texas A&M as the conference site for this second DARK conference outside Germany.
Heidelberg H.V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus
College Station R. Arnowitt
April 2005 (Chairmen of DARK 2004)
