Related papers: The Future of Particle Physics as a Natural Scienc…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
The apparent dominance of matter over antimatter in our universe is an obvious and puzzling fact which cannot be adequately explained in present physical frameworks that assume matter-antimatter symmetry at the big bang. However, our…
The Standard Model of the electroweak and strong interactions of particle physics is a quantum field theory. Elementary particles are not indivisible `pieces' of matter but energy bundles of fields, whose properties and interactions are a…
The Standard Cosmological Model of the 1980's is no more. I describe the definitive evidence that the density of matter is insufficient to result in a flat universe, as well as the mounting evidence that the cosmological constant is not…
Symmetry, in particular gauge symmetry, is a fundamental principle in theoretical physics. It is intimately connected to the geometry of fibre bundles. A refinement to the gauge principle, known as ``spontaneous symmetry breaking'', leads…
The author's opinion on the interpretation of quantum mechanics is further elucidated. Not only may quantum mechanics be a description of the sub-microscopic world that is profoundly different from what is often asserted, particularly…
I briefly review our current understanding of dark matter and dark energy. The first part of this paper focusses on issues pertaining to dark matter including observational evidence for its existence, current constraints and the `abundance…
Till now, the foundation of quantum physics is still mysterious. To explore the mysteries in the foundation of quantum physics, people always take it for granted that quantum processes must be some types of fields/objects on a rigid space.…
The Standard Model of Particle Physics has proven to be tremendously successful as the fundamental theory that describes the elementary particles that compose our Universe, as well as the interactions among them. Despite the countless…
We review a variety of theoretical and experimental investigations aimed at improving our knowledge of the nuclear matter equation of state. Of particular interest are nuclear matter extreme states in terms of density and/or isospin…
A brief sketch is made of the present observational status of neutrino physics, with emphasis on the hints that follow from solar and atmospheric neutrino observations, as well as cosmological data on the amplitude of primordial density…
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
A brief review of the Standard Model of particle physics is presented.
We consider the Standard Models of particle physics and hot big bang cosmology, and review the theoretical and experimental motivations for extending these models to include supersymmetry and inflation. An obvious extension would be to…
A particular science is not only defined by its object of study, but also by the point of view and method under which it considers that same object. Taking space and time as an illustrative example, our main aim here is to bring out an…
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
Quantum cosmology has traditionally been studied at the level of symmetry-reduced minisuperspace models, analyzing the behavior of wave functions. However, in the absence of a complete full setting of quantum gravity and detailed knowledge…
These notes are an outgrowth of an advanced undergraduate course taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. They are intended as an introduction to various aspects of particle and nuclear physics with an emphasis on the role of…
Some aspects and applications of $ \sigma$-models in particle and condensed matter physics are briefly reviewed.