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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

The hierarchy problem, the puzzlingly light mass of the Higgs, is one of the largest open questions in physics beyond the Standard Model…

Crucial measurements were made at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan

Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald led two teams which made key observations of the particles inside big underground instruments in Japan…

Slowly gathering energy 

Pascal Boegli/Getty

Kicking the world’s largest machine into overdrive is turning out to be harder than expected. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider…

Last night the Operations team for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) successfully circulated a beam at 6.5 teralectronvolts…

Related Events

Macroscopic dark matter is mostly unconstrained over a wide asteroid-mass range, where it could scatter on visible matter with geometric cross section. In this talk, I shall describe when such a 'dark asteroid' travels through a star, it produces…

I will argue that if the density of dark matter in the early universe is dominated by subhorizon, non-relativistic field modes, then there is a relatively model-independent bound on the mass of dark matter particles [m > 10^(-18) eV]. The…

Dark matter self interactions can leave distinctive signatures on the properties of satellite galaxies around Milky Way-like hosts. By analyzing a number of Milky Way dwarf galaxies, we were able to place new constraints on models of self-…

We argue that the hierarchy problem of the standard model of particle physics can be solved by adding a state-dependent term to the Higgs sector. We present an example of a scalar field with a Higgs-like potential with an additional term…

Abstract: Quantum information science seeks to exploit the collective behavior of a large quantum system to enable tasks that are impossible (or less possible!) with classical resources alone. This burgeoning field encompasses a variety…

The Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) is a relic of the pre-CMB era which encodes a trove of information about the early Universe and the neutrino sector dating back to when the Universe was less than a second old. In this talk, I will argue that…

Ben Garber head shot

Abstract: Matter-wave interferometry using ultracold atoms in free-fall is a versatile experimental technique for precision measurement of fundamental physical constants and laws. The Hogan Lab is developing the subdiscipline of large…

Rare neutral kaon decays provide a sensitive probe of the flavor and CP structure of axion-like particle (ALP) couplings. I will present the first calculation of the weak-interaction contribution to three-body neutral kaon decay rates and compare…

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) is a powerful tool for probing both new physics and LCDM, and complements analyses utilizing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and results from particle experiment.  I will provide two examples of BBN…