Superconducting detectors for laboratory dark matter searches

Convincing data exist showing that galaxies are surrounded by non-luminous matter. This ''dark matter'' shows itself through its gravitational interactions with luminous matter, and dominates the mass of galaxies by about a factor of ten. Our understanding of early universe nucleosynthesis together with the observational data on the relative abundance of the light elements set Ωbaryon<0.2 (0.2 of the critical density). However, Ω=1 is an unstable equilibrium, and inflationary models of the early universe predict that Ω=1 to high precision. Thus, it seems likely that 90% of the matter of the universe is non-baryonic and weakly interacting, and that the dark matter halos may be largely non-baryonic. These particles would than be present in the cosmic rays and be observable with sensitive laboratory detectors