WIMP dark matter and supersymmetry searches with neutrino telescopes

The particle physics interpretation of the missing-mass, or dark-matter, a problem of cosmological and astrophysical nature, is going to be placed under strong scrutiny in the next years. From the particle physics side, accelerator physics will deeply test theoretical ideas about new physics beyond the Standard Model, where a particle physics candidate to dark matter is often naturally obtained. From the astrophysical side, many probes are already providing a great deal of independent information on signals which can be produced by the galactic or extra-galactic dark matter. The current and new-generation experimental efforts are therefore going to place under deep scrutiny the theoretical explanations of the relevant signals. The ultimate hope is in fact to be able to disentangle a dark matter signal from the various sources of backgrounds. Neutrino telescopes are one of the prominent tools for looking at dark matter and search for a signal, the neutrino flux from Earth and Sun. In this neutrino dark matter searches share properties with both direct dark matter searches and cosmic-ray indirect dark matter searches, and therefore complement these different detection techniques. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.