ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the most attractive models of dark matter, starting from traditional weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and the strategies that are explored to search for dark matter. There have been attempts to explain the galactic rotation curves not as the effect of the presence of a non-baryonic dark matter component, but in terms of a modification of Newtonian dynamics. The big puzzle is to identify its nature determining quantum numbers, mass, charges. It is natural first to scrutinise the zoo of known elementary particles. The most attractive solution is that dark matter is made of some massive elementary particle with no electromagnetic or strong interactions. The discovery of neutrino oscillations seemed finally to establish the role of massive neutrinos as a hot dark matter component, though sub-dominant. The null results from searches of dark matter WIMPs basically rule out the WIMP miracle, at least in its canonical realisation.
