WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles are hypothesized to be a component of the dark matter known to exist in galactic halos, galaxy clusters, and, through , as approximately 20% of the energy density in the observable Universe. The properties of WIMPs are set by the physics of the weak interactions, so that their mass cannot be too different from the masses of the W and Z bosons. A reasonable window to search in is

. The motivation for the connection between weak interaction physics and dark matter comes from the phenomenology of WIMP production in the early Universe. It turns out that if you hypothesize WIMP dark matter and predict the abundance of WIMPs you would have today if they were formed by standard production mechanisms in the early Universe, the predictions are compatible with the observed abundance. Many astrophysicists suspect that this is more than a coincidence.

Experiments I have some involvement in include ZEPLIN II - a recently finished, STFC funded search for WIMPs using 35kg of liquid Xenon instrumented with photomultiplier tubes, DRIFT - a time projection chamber containing aiming to establish sensitivity to the direction of incidence of WIMP dark matter, and EURECA, a proposed tonne-scale dark matter experiment using targets made of crystal bolometers.