Related papers: Symmetries, Dark Matter and Minicharged Particles
The nature of dark matter is one of the most pressing questions in particle physics. Yet all our present knowledge of the dark sector to date comes from its gravitational interactions with astrophysical systems. Moreover, astronomical…
An effective theory for dark matter has recently been proposed. The key assumption is that the dark matter particle which is a Dirac fermion is protected from decaying by a global U(1) symmetry. We point out that quantum gravity effects…
We review dark matter (DM) candidates of a very low mass, appearing in the window below the traditional weakly-interacting massive particle $m_\chi \lesssim 10$ GeV and extending down to $m_\chi \gtrsim 1$ meV, somewhat below the mass limit…
The stability of dark matter is normally achieved by imposing extra symmetries beyond those of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. In this paper we present a framework where the dark matter stability emerges as a consequence of the…
The nature of dark matter and the origin of the baryon asymmetry are two of the deepest mysteries of modern particle physics. In the absence of hints regarding a possible solution to these mysteries, many approaches have been developed to…
The standard model (SM) of particle physics is for the last three decades a very successful description of the properties and interactions of all known elementary particles. Currently, it is again probed with the first collisions at the…
Several lines of evidence suggest that some of the dark matter may be non-baryonic: the non-detection of various plausible baryonic candidates for dark matter inferred, e.g., from galaxy rotation curves and from cluster of galaxy velocity…
The Standard Model is in good shape, apart possibly from g_\mu - 2 and some niggling doubts about the electroweak data. Something like a Higgs boson is required to provide particle masses, but theorists are actively considering…
There exists one experimental result that cannot be explained by the Standard Model (SM), the current theoretical framework for particle physics: non-zero masses for the neutrinos (elementary particles travelling close to light speed,…
We review theories of dark matter (DM) beyond the collisionless paradigm, known as self-interacting dark matter (SIDM), and their observable implications for astrophysical structure in the Universe. Self-interactions are motivated, in part,…
Symmetry distills the simplicity of natural laws from the complexity of physical phenomena. The symmetry principle is of vital importance in various aspects of modern physics, including analyzing atomic spectra, determining fundamental…
I suggest a left-right mirror symmetric particle model as the natural and aesthetic extension of the SM. As the left-right mirror symmetry breaking, the tiny neutrino mass is generated by the radiative mechanism, the baryon asymmetry…
We study the vacuum condensate characterizing many physical phenomena. We show that such a condensate may leads to non-trivial components of the dark energy and of the dark matter and may induces the spontaneous supersymmetry breaking, in a…
We describe a new mechanism of decoherence in excited atoms as a result of thermal particles scattering by the atomic nucleus. It is based on the idea that a single scattering will produce a sudden displacement of the nucleus, which will be…
Collider, space, and Earth based experiments are now able to probe several extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics which provide viable dark matter candidates. Direct and indirect dark matter searches rely on inputs of…
Motivated by LHC results, we modify the usual criterion for naturalness by ignoring the uncomputable power divergences. The Standard Model satisfies the modified criterion ('finite naturalness') for the measured values of its parameters.…
The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is a precise model of electroweak interactions, however there is growing tension between the SM and observations (neutrino oscillations, dark matter, dark energy, baryogenesis, among others).…
It is a puzzle why the densities of dark matter and dark energy are nearly equal today when they scale so differently during the expansion of the universe. This conundrum may be solved if there is a coupling between the two dark sectors. In…
We explore the viability of a boson dark matter candidate with an asymmetry between the number densities of particles and antiparticles. A simple thermal field theory analysis confirms that, under certain general conditions, this component…
We present a systematic cosmological study of a universe in which the visible sector is coupled, albeit very weakly, to a hidden sector comprised of its own set of particles and interactions. Assuming that dark matter (DM) resides in the…