Scientific Series

I will discuss cosmological, astrophysical and collider constraints on thermal dark matter with mass in the range 1 MeV to 10 GeV. CMB observations can be evaded if the DM relic density is sufficiently asymmetric, while collider constraints generally require sufficiently light mediators. These light mediators can give rise to significant DM self-interactions, and I will describe bounds on such interactions from dark matter halo shapes. Finally, I will describe how these constraints map onto the parameter space of DM-electron and DM-nucleon scattering cross sections for direct detection.

We propose that the fermionic superpartner of a weak-scale Goldstone boson can be a nat- ural WIMP candidate. The p-wave annihilation of this `Goldstone fermion' into pairs of Gold- stone bosons automatically generates the correct relic abundance, whereas the XENON100 direct detection bounds are evaded due to suppressed couplings to the Standard Model. Further, it is able to avoid indirect detection constraints because the relevant s-wave annihi- lations are small. The interactions of the Goldstone supermultiplet can induce non-standard Higgs decays and novel collider phenomenology.

To study the continuum limit of a microscopic model of gravity we need microscopic observables that have a clear interpretation in terms of continuum geometry. In general the construction of such observables is notoriously difficult. In the model of causal dynamical triangulations (CDT) it is clear what the microscopic observables are, but at present the only known well-behaved observables with a continuum interpretation are spatial volumes. In this talk I will demonstrate what it takes to go beyond these by introducing the moduli as observables for CDT in 2+1 dimensions with spatial topology of the torus. Measurements of these observables using computer simulations provide valuable clues concerning the effective action describing CDT in the continuum. In particular I will present numerical evidence indicating that the effective kinetic term is well described by a modified Wheeler-De Witt metric like the one appearing in Horava-Lifshitz gravity.

Paul Dirac has been called ‘the first truly modern theoretical physicist’. In the latter part of his life, he was obsessed by the idea that the fundamental laws of nature must have mathematical beauty. This was ‘almost a religion to him’, he said. In this talk, I shall trace the origins of his fascination with this idea (going back to his school education) and question the account he gave of his contribution to quantum mechanics and field theory, which he often said emerged from his aesthetic perspective. I shall also give some insights into the extraordinary character of this man, whom Niels Bohr called ‘the strangest man’ who ever visited his Institute in Copenhagen.

The description of non-Fermi liquid metals is one of the central problems in the theory of correlated electron systems. I present a holographic theory which builds on general features of the thermal entropy density and the entanglement entropy. Remarkable connections emerge between the holographic approach, and the postulated strong-coupling behavior of the field-theoretic approach.

We show that a baryon asymmetry can be generated by dissipative effects during warm inflation via a supersymmetric two-stage mechanism, where the inflaton is coupled to heavy mediator fields that then decay into light species through B- and CP-violating interactions. In contrast with thermal GUT baryogenesis models, the temperature during inflation is always below the heavy mass threshold, simultaneously suppressing thermal and quantum corrections to the inflaton potential and the production of dangerous GUT relics. This naturally gives a small baryon asymmetry close to the observed value, although parametrically larger values may be diluted after inflation along with any gravitino overabundance. Furthermore, this process yields baryon isocurvature perturbations within the range of future experiments, making this an attractive and testable model of GUT baryogenesis.

I will discuss some work on the collider phenomenology and cosmology of light gravitino dark matter, and will touch on some related issues concerning infrared divergences in charged-particle decay at finite temperature.
Light gravitinos, with mass in the eV to MeV range, are well-motivated in particle physics, but their status as dark-matter candidates is muddled by early-Universe uncertainties.

Both Tevatron experiments have recently reported an anomalous forward-backward asymmetry in top-antitop production. Their inclusive results are roughly 3 standard deviations larger than the standard model prediction and may be evidence of new physics that couples to the top quark. In this talk, I will present a weakly-coupled light axigluon model (< Mtop) with flavor universal couplings as a possible explanation. Surprisingly,a particle with these properties can generate a large ttbar asymmetry with model-parameters safe from dijet resonance searches, flavor changing neutral currents, and constraints from the Z pole.