IFT-UAM/CSIC, Madrid April 27 - May 15

Thanks to fast-paced experimental developments, the field of dark matter research is experiencing a flourishing which might well lead, in the next few years, to the identification of the fundamental particle nature of dark matter. Rapid progress is being driven by three momentous forces: 

1. a wide-ranging international effort in direct dark matter detection, which utilizes a diverse set of experimental techniques and of target materials to look for the scattering of dark matter with "ordinary" matter; 
2. a generation of space-based missions entering their mature stage (including Fermi, PAMELA and Planck) driving the search for the annihilation or decay debris of dark matter (indirect detection) and producing even more precise constraints on the dark matter cosmological abundance; and 
3. the full deployment of science operations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with its promises for a revolutionary understanding of new physics beyond the Standard Model, after the momentous discovery of the Higgs. In addition, parallel theoretical progress includes the exploration of new theories for dark matter, including some tailored to recent experimental results, and numerous investigations of the phenomenological implications of theoretically compelling particle physics scenarios.

The scope of the proposed research program is to bring together theorists and experimentalists involved in searches for new physics at the LHC with physicists specializing in direct and indirect searches for dark matter, as well as cosmologists, at what we deem to be a critical point in time. 

The format of the workshop will include plenty of time for informal discussions, office space for all partcipants, maximum one topical seminar per day. The workshop is aimed at promoting informal discussion and spark new collaborations