Related papers: The Dark Dimension and the Swampland
A six parameter cosmological model, involving a vacuum energy density that is extremely tiny compared to fundamental particle physics scales, describes a large body of increasingly accurate astronomical data. In a first part of this brief…
One of the simplest extensions of the Standard Model (SM) comprises the inclusion of a massive real scalar field, neutral under the SM gauge groups, to be a dark matter candidate. The addition of a dimension-six term into the potential of…
The enigmatic phenomenon of dark energy (DE) is regarded as the elusive entity driving the accelerated expansion of our Universe. A plausible candidate for DE is the non-zero Einstein Cosmological Constant $\Lambda_{E}$ manifested as a…
We outline a dynamical dark energy scenario whose signatures may be simultaneously tested by astronomical observations and laboratory experiments. The dark energy is a field with slightly sub-gravitational couplings to matter, a logarithmic…
Major observational efforts in the coming decade are designed to probe the equation of state of dark energy. Measuring a deviation of the equation-of-state parameter w from -1 would indicate a dark energy that cannot be represented solely…
We consider a composite model where both the Higgs and a complex scalar $\chi$, which is the dark matter (DM) candidate, arise as light pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons (pNGBs) from a strongly coupled sector with TeV scale confinement. The…
The actual realization of the electroweak symmetry breaking in the context of a natural extension of the Standard Model (SM) and the nature of Dark Matter (DM) are two of the most compelling questions in high-energy particle physics.…
We consider a general class of vector-tensor theories of gravity and show that solutions with accelerated expansion and a future type III singularity are a common feature in these models. We also show that there are only six vector-tensor…
We discuss the vacuum energy density term resulting from the spontaneous breakdown of the electroweak gauge symmetry, in the Higgs Mechanism. We alternatively expand the scalar field at one of the degenerate states that lie outside the…
In effective quantum field theory, a spin-1 vector boson can have a technically natural small mass that does not originate from the Higgs mechanism. For such theories, which may be written in St\"uckelberg form, there is no point in field…
One of the greatest challenges of science is to understand the current accelerated expansion of the Universe. In this work, we show that by considering the quantum nature of the gravitational field, its wavelength can be associated with an…
Null results from dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments and the 125 GeV Higgs both pose serious challenges to minimal supersymmetry. In this paper, we propose a simple extension of the MSSM that economically solves both problems: a…
We consider an extension of the Standard Model involving two new scalar particles around the TeV scale: a singlet neutral scalar $\phi$, to be eventually identified as the Dark Matter candidate, plus a doubly charged $SU(2)_L$ singlet…
We present detailed analyses of the vacuum structure of the scalar potential in a supersymmetric Mass Varying Neutrinos model. The observed dark energy density is identified with false vacuum energy and the dark energy scale of order…
It has recently been conjectured that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua, and that quintessence explains the current epoch of accelerated cosmic expansion. A proposed, key prediction of this scenario is time-varying couplings in…
If an ultraviolet fixed point renders quantum gravity renormalizable, the effective potential for a singlet scalar field -- the cosmon -- can be computed according to the corresponding scaling solution of the renormalization group…
We consider cosmological tests of a scalar-vector-tensor gravitational model, in which the dark energy is included in the total action through a gauge invariant, electromagnetic type contribution. The ground state of dark energy,…
Thermal relics lighter than an MeV contribute to the energy density of the universe at the time of nucleosynthesis and recombination. Constraints on extra radiation degrees of freedom typically exclude even the simplest of such dark…
In this paper, we establish that the solution to the dark energy problem is connected to the cutoff Ultraviolet scale manifesting itself as linearly independent infrared sectors of the effective theory of gravity interacting with QCD…
We study Asymmetric Dark Matter (ADM) in the context of the minimal (Fraternal) Twin Higgs solution to the little hierarchy problem, with a twin sector with gauged $SU(3)' \times SU(2)'$, a twin Higgs, and only third generation twin…