Abstract.
Dark matter is an essential building block in the standard model of cosmology. Any theoretical description in terms of hypothetical new particles must therefore include a production mechanism that can explain, with sufficient accuracy, the presently observed dark matter density. In this talk I will briefly review some of the most compelling arguments in favour of the dark matter hypothesis, and give a pedagogic overview of the most often discussed frameworks for dark matter production from the primordial thermal bath of standard model particles - namely the 'freeze-out' of particles initially in full equilibrium with the standard model and the 'freeze-in' of particles too feebly interacting to ever equilibrize, respectively. I will then introduce a newly proposed generic production scenario that features an era of exponential ('pandemic') growth of the dark matter density. As a concrete application, I demonstrate how this opens up highly relevant -- and relatively shortly testable -- new
parameter space for sterile neutrino dark matter.
(The slides will be available here)