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Beyond The Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is amazingly successful, yet it leaves many basic questions unanswered.  From bizarre, unexplained parameters such as the cosmological constant, Higgs mass, or neutron electric dipole moment to the lack of explanation for observed phenomena such as dark matter and baryogenesis, there is strong evidence that the Standard Model must be extended.  At SITP we have focused on finding solutions to these open problems to discover what these hints tell us about the underlying laws of physics.

Video Briefs

A Path to Detecting Self-Interacting Dark Matter using Astrophysical Sub-Structure

Dark matter self interactions can leave distinctive signatures on the properties of satellite…

PQ Axiverse

I construct a landscape of vacua of string theory and study the resulting ensemble of N-axion…

Related News

Savas Dimopoulos

In his talk at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Savas Dimopoulos explores the emergence of nimble, small-scale science…

Dr. Racco's research during his SITP postdoctoral appointment has been awarded the Third Prize of the 2023 Buchalter Cosmology Prize.

Peter Graham

If the electron’s charge wasn’t perfectly round, it could reveal the existence of hidden particles. A new measurement approaches…

Peter Graham is interested in discovering the fundamental laws of nature that lie beyond the known standard model. He received an A.B./A…

Image credit: L.A. Cicero

The history of particle accelerators is one of seemingly constant one-upmanship. Ever since the 1920s, the machines – which spur charged…

Credit: Harrison Truong

A team of Stanford University researchers are on a mission to identify dark matter once and for all. But first, they'll need to build the…

Related Events

Primordial black holes (PBHs)—black holes formed in the early universe by mechanisms other than stellar collapse—were first posited by Hawking and Carr in 1975. Fifty years later, as particle dark matter candidates continue to elude direct…

Katherine Fraser

Measurements of the flavor structure of the Standard Model can be precise probes of physics beyond it. In this talk, we describe two implications of various flavor physics measurements. First, we discuss the use of Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) models…

Dark matter can be captured in stars and planets after scattering and losing sufficient energy to become gravitationally bound. I will discuss a new framework to describe what happens when dark matter is captured by these objects, and demonstrate…

The baryon sector of the present universe is almost entirely matter and no antimatter. High energy astrophysical events can only produce a tiny amount of antimatter, a minuscule fraction of which may form nuclear bound states.  Given the…

Dark matter (DM) freeze-in through a light mediator is an appealing model with excellent detection prospects at current and future experiments. Light mediator freeze-in is UV-insensitive insofar as most DM is produced at late times, and thus the…

We study fuzzy axion dark matter in type IIB string theory, for axions descending from the Ramond-Ramond four-form in compactifications on orientifolds of Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces. Such models can be tested by cosmological measurements if a…

Fermi LAT has revealed an excess from the Galactic center that is compatible with a signal of dark matter annihilation, but other interpretations such as a population of millisecond pulsars have been found compelling. More recently, an excess…

In this talk, I will present a novel mechanism for gravitational wave generation from spectator scalar fields in the early universe. Spectator scalar fields with masses below the inflationary scale can produce significant isocurvature power…

A dark force, which is a necessary ingredient of self-interacting dark matter models, can lead to gravothermal collapse of dark matter in small mass halos. This talk will review the physics of gravothermal collapse and highlight new results…