Related papers: Light particles - A window to fundamental physics
The early universe grants access to energy scales far beyond those achievable in terrestrial experiments and allows unstable Standard Model particles to play an active dynamical role. In this contribution, we focus on recent studies aimed…
Strong mixing between photons and axion-like particles in the magnetic fields of clusters of galaxies induces a scatter in the observed luminosities of compact sources in the cluster. This is used to construct a new test for axion-like…
Shining light through walls? At first glance this sounds crazy. However, very feeble gravitational and electroweak effects allow for this exotic possibility. Unfortunately, with present and near future technologies the opportunity to…
This write--up gives a rather elementary introduction into particle physics aspects of the cosmological Dark Matter puzzle. A fairly comprehensive list of possible candidates is given; in each case the production mechanism and possible ways…
Many theoretically well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics predict the existence of the axion and further ultralight axion-like particles. They may constitute the mysterious dark matter in the universe and solve…
The Standard Model of particle physics is a $SU(3)_c\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y$ gauge theory that can explain the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions between the particles. The gravitational interaction is described by…
In this mini-review, possible manifestations of mixing between axion-like particles (ALPs) and energetic photons propagating over astronomical distances are considered. We discuss the evidence for the anomalous transparency of the Universe…
The investigation on the production of particles in slowly varying but extremely intense magnetic field in extended to the case of axions. The motivation is, as for some previously considered cases, the possibility that such kind of…
The dynamics of the universe may be dominated by novel weakly interacting elementary particles, by baryons in an invisible form, by black holes, and globally by vacuum energy. The main arguments for and against such hypotheses are reviewed.
Physically observable particles are assumed to result from an interaction between massless positively and negatively oriented 2-component Weyl neutrinos. A simple quantum mechanical analysis of a composite system of Weyl neutrinos of…
Classical theory asserts that several electromagnetic waves cannot interact with matter if they interfere destructively to zero, whereas quantum mechanics predicts a nontrivial light-matter dynamics even when the average electric field…
Probing the existence of hypothetical particles beyond the Standard model often deals with extreme parameters: large energies, tiny cross-sections, large time scales, etc. Sometimes laboratory experiments can test required regions of…
The axion has emerged in recent years as a leading particle candidate to provide the mysterious dark matter in the cosmos, as we review here for a general scientific audience. We describe first the historical roots of the axion in the…
The observation of a non-vanishing rotation of linear polarized laser light after passage through a strong magnetic field by the PVLAS collaboration has renewed the interest in light particles coupled to photons. Axions are a species of…
The possibility that around some astrophysical objects there are non-static magnetic fields of enormous intensity suggests that in these situations real particles may be produced. The slowness of the variation is compensated by the huge…
The origin of various celestial phenomena have remained mysterious for conventional astrophysics. Therefore, alternative solutions should be considered, taking into account the involvement of unstable dark-matter particle candidates, such…
The standard model of particle physics is marvelously successful. However, it is obviously not a complete or final theory. I shall argue here that the structure of the standard model gives some quite concrete, compelling hints regarding…
The reader surely knows what particles physics is about: finding building blocks of nature that appear elementary at a given time and study their interactions - so why in the world this essay? The problem is how to arrive at a fundamental…
Axions are light pseudoscalar bosons postulated with many motivations in particle physics and cosmology, including the strong CP problem and the dark matter in our Universe. In this lecture notes, we discuss a variety of known ultraviolet…
There is plenty of evidence that most matter in the Universe is dark (non-luminous). Particle physics offers several possible explanations. In this talk I focus on cold dark matter; the most promising candidates are then axions and the…