by Dr Julia Vogel
(Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
The puzzling nature of dark matter (DM), which is expected to contribute about 25% to the mass of the universe, remains one of the fundamental questions in cosmology. Axions are one of the current leading candidates for the hypothetical, non-baryonic DM. Especially in the light of LHC and WIMP experiments slowly closing in on WIMP searches, axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) provide a viable alternative approach to solving the dark matter problem. The fact that makes them very appealing is that they were initially introduced to solve a long-standing QCD problem in the Standard Model of particle physics. This talk will introduce the basics of axions and ALPs, and the various types of experiments that are searching for the dark matter candidates. The latest results on the elusive particles will be presented and an outlook will be given on the next generation of axion search experiments such as the International AXion Observatory (IAXO).