寻找宇宙中的暗物质

宇宙中存在暗物质已经得到大量天文观测的证实,但关于暗物质粒子的本质我们仍旧一无所知。为了理解暗物质的性质,许多暗物质探测实验正在展开。直接探测实验探测的是暗物质粒子与探测器物质碰撞所留下的信号,而间接探测实验则寻找暗物质湮灭的产物,如高能伽马射线、高能中微子、正电子和反质子等。理解暗物质所产生的这些信号需要我们了解暗物质的微观粒子的性质,同时也需要了解暗物质在星系或星系团中的分布形式等宏观性质。随着更大规模、更高灵敏度的实验不断投入运行,暗物质之谜有可能在不久的将来得以破解。

Detecting Dark Matter in the Universe

The existence of dark matter in the universe has been confirmed by a lot of astronomy observations. However, we do not know the properties of dark matter yet. In order to learn the nature of dark matter, many experiments searching for dark matter are taking data or are under construction. By direct detection the experiments look for the signal when the dark matter particles scatter off the nuclei of the detector material; by indirect detection the experiments look for the annihilation products of dark matter, such as the high energy gamma rays, neutrinos, positrons or anti-protons. To study the signals, not only the particle nature of the dark matter should be well known, but the astrophysical nature of dark matter should also be well known, such as the profile of dark matter in the galaxies or in the clusters of the galaxies. As more experiments are going to take data we expect the nature of dark matter will be solved in the near future.