Table of contents

Over the past decade, detectors based on liquid noble elements have been at the frontier in the search for WIMP dark matter. They have been shown to powerfully combine low threshold, low background, recoil ID, large mass and self shielding, leading to unprecedented sensitivity to WIMP-nuclear recoil scatters. I will review the current suite of technologies and results to date, and provide an outlook for the coming years.

If dark matter is made of particles governed by weak-scale physics, they may annihilate or decay to leave observable signatures in high-energy gamma-ray sky. In addition, any charged particles produced by the same process will also give low-frequency photons through successive electromagnetic interactions. Plenty of data from modern astrophysical measurements of various wavelengths, especially gamma rays, enabled new analysis techniques to search for these dark matter signatures with an unprecedented sensitivities. Since it is very likely that signatures of dark matter annihilation or decay is hidden in the gamma-ray data, one should fully utilize all available data including: (1) energy spectrum of all wavelengths ranging from radio to very-high-energy gamma rays; (2) spatial clustering probed with the angular power spectrum of the gamma-ray background; (3) cross correlation between the gamma-ray distribution with nearby galaxy catalogs; and (4) gamma-ray-flux distribution. I will review recent theoretical and observational developments in all these aspects, and discuss prospects for the future towards discovery of dark matter as an elementary particle in physics beyond the standard model.

An overview of the latest results of Dark Matter direct detection obtained by experiments using crystals will be summarized. A particular care will be given to the results obtained by exploiting the model independent Dark Matter annual modulation signature for the presence of Dark Matter particles in the galactic halo. Results from the other experiments using different procedures, different techniques and different target-materials will be shortly addressed as well as implications and experimental perspectives.

In the next decade, multi-messenger astronomy will probe the rich physics of transient phenomena in the sky, such as the mergers of neutron stars and/or black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and core-collapse supernovae. The first observations of gravitational waves from the inspiral and merger of a binary black-hole system by the advanced LIGO interferometers marked the onset of gravitational-wave astronomy. The advanced detectors, LIGO and Virgo, observing together with space and ground-based electromagnetic telescopes, and neutrinos and cosmic-ray detectors will offer the great opportunity to explore the Universe through all its messengers. The paper provides a review of the astrophysical sources expected to emit transient multi-messenger signals and the multi-messenger obervational startegies and analysis. Challenges and perspectives of the multi-messenger astronomy are presented highlighting gravitational waves as new messenger.

I discuss the status, the recent developments and the prospects of indirect searches for Dark Matter using charged cosmic rays: electrons, positrons, antiprotons and antideuterium.

After more than 3/4 of century from its proposal, Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (NLDBD) is still missing observation and continues to represent the only practical method for investigating the Dirac/Majorana nature of neutrinos. In case neutrinos would be Majorana particles, NLDBD would provide unique informations on their properties (absolute mass scale and Majorana phases). Boosted by the discovery of neutrino oscillations, a number of experiments with improved sensitivity have been proposed in the past decade. Some of them have recently started operation and others are ready to start. They will push the experimental sensitivity on the decay halflife beyond 10²⁶ year, starting to analyze the region of the inverted mass hierarchy. The status and perspectives of the ongoing experimental effort are reviewed. Uncertainties coming from the calculation othe decay nuclear matrix elements (NME) as well as the recently suggested possibility of a relevant quenching of the axial coupling constant are also discussed.

The physics of supernova neutrinos continues to be a puzzle. Insight into the nature of collective oscillations, that were obtained over the past decade, are slowly beginning to reveal a rich phenomenology. One of major issues is the role of symmetry breaking, be it in spatial homogeneity or temporal stationarity. We reported some new results in this specific area and reviewed the progress in the field of supernova neutrinos, in general.

Knowledge of the distant high-energy universe comes from photons, ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), high-energy neutrinos, and gravitational waves. The theory of high-energy messengers reviewed here focuses on the extragalactic background light at all wavelengths, cosmic rays and magnetic fields in intergalactic space, and neutrinos of extragalactic origin. Comparisons are drawn between the intensities of photons and UHECRs in intergalactic space, and the high-energy neutrinos recently detected with IceCube at about the Waxman-Bahcall flux. Source candidates for UHECRs and high-energy neutrinos are reviewed, focusing on star-forming and radio-loud active galaxies. HAWC and Advanced LIGO are just underway, with much anticipation.

The world-wide network of km-scale laser interferometers is aiming at the detection of gravitational waves of astrophysical origin. The second generation of these instruments, called advanced detectors has been, or is in the process of being completed, and a first observational run with the Advanced LIGO interferometers has been performed late in 2015. The basic functionality of advanced detectors is discussed, along with specific features and status updates of the individual projects.

The observation of cosmic gamma-rays from the ground is based upon the detection of gamma-ray initiated air showers. At energies between approximately 10¹¹ eV and 10¹³ eV, the imaging air Cherenkov technique is a particularly successful approach to observe gamma-ray sources with energy fluxes as low as ≈ 10^-13 erg cm^-2 s^-1. The observations of gamma-rays in this energy band probe particle acceleration in astrophysical plasma conditions and are sensitive to high energy phenomena beyond the standard model of particle physics (e.g., self-annihilating or decaying dark matter, violation of Lorentz invariance, mixing of photons with light pseudoscalars). The current standing of the field and its major instruments are summarized briefly by presenting selected highlights. A new generation of ground based gamma-ray instruments is currently under development. The perspectives and opportunities of these future facilities will be discussed.

A review is given of the current status of searches for dark matter at accelerators. Particular emphasis is put on generic searches for direct production of dark matter at the LHC during its first run, and on the recent developments for the interpretation of the results, where the models using an effective field theory approach are now being complemented with more generic interpretations in the context of simplified models. Furthermore, results are reported briefly for searches for dark matter at the LHC in the context of supersymmetry, as well as for non-LHC accelerator searches.

There exist several kinds of sources emitting neutrinos in the MeV energy range. These low-energy neutrinos from different sources can be often detected by the same multipurpose detectors. The status-of-art of the field of solar neutrinos, geoneutrinos, and the search for sterile neutrino with artificial neutrino sources is provided here; other neutrino sources, as for example reactor or high-energy neutrinos, are described elsewhere. For each of these three fields, the present-day motivation and open questions, as well as the latest experimental results and future perspectives are discussed.

With a mass at least six orders of magnitudes smaller than the mass of an electron – but non-zero – neutrinos are a clear misfit in the Standard Model of Particle Physics. On the one hand, its tiny mass makes the neutrino one of the most interesting particles, one that might hold the key to physics beyond the Standard Model. On the other hand this minute mass leads to great challenges in its experimental determination. Three approaches are currently pursued: An indirect neutrino mass determination via cosmological observables, the search for neutrinoless double β-decay, and a direct measurement based on the kinematics of single β-decay. In this paper the latter will be discussed in detail and the status and scientific reach of the current and near-future experiments will be presented.

Following the discovery of neutrino oscillations by the Super-Kamiokande collaboration, recently awarded with the Nobel Prize, two generations of long baseline experiments had been setup to further study neutrino oscillations. The first generation experiments, K2K in Japan, Minos in the States and Opera in Europe, focused in confirming the Super-Kamiokande result, improving the precision with which oscillation parameters had been measured and demonstrating the ν_τ appearance process.

Second generation experiments, T2K in Japan and very recently NOνA in the States, went further, being optimized to look for genuine three neutrino phenomena like non-zero values of θ₁₃ and first glimpses to leptonic CP violation (LCPV) and neutrino mass ordering (NMO).

The discovery of leptonic CP violation will require third generation setups, at the moment two strong proposals are ongoing, Dune in the States and Hyper-Kamiokande in Japan. This review will focus a little more in these future initiatives.

Several anomalies recorded in short-baseline neutrino experiments suggest the possibility that the standard 3-flavor framework may be incomplete and point towards a manifestation of new physics. Light sterile neutrinos provide a credible solution to these puzzling results. Here, we present a concise review of the status of the neutrino oscillations within the 3+1 scheme, the minimal extension of the standard 3-flavor framework endowed with one sterile neutrino species. We emphasize the potential role of LBL experiments in the searches of CP violation related to sterile neutrinos and their complementarity with the SBL experiments.

This paper is a position paper on open data policy and data sharing in Astroparticle Physics, focusing on the case of high-energy multi-messenger astronomy. It is presented on behalf of ApPIC, Astroparticle Physics International Committee [1], IUPAP (International Union for Pure and Applied Physics) working group 10.

I review how precision data from observations of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies and the large-scale structure distribution can be used to probe particle physics. Some examples are the absolute neutrino mass scale, dark radiation, light sterile neutrinos, QCD axions, WIMP annihilation, and dark sector interactions.