A review of direct WIMP search experiments

The dynamics of the Milky Way provides evidence for a non-luminous mass component. The dark matter could be made of new, color and charge neutral particles, which were non-relativistic when they decoupled from ordinary matter in the early Universe. Dark matter particles are predicted to have a non-zero coupling to baryons and could be detected via their collisions with atomic nuclei in ultra-low background, deep underground detectors. Predicted nuclear recoil energies are smaller than ∼50 keV and expected scattering rates are well below 1 event per year and kg of target material. After an introduction to the methodology, I will briefly discuss the main experimental techniques used in direct dark matter searches, with emphasis on current results and on the status of future projects.