Baryogenesis at the electroweak scale requires the EW phase transition to be first order, and the discovery of the 125 GeV Higgs confirms that it is second order in the standard model. A myriad of extensions to the Higgs sector have been proposed to still allow for EW baryogenesis. Most approaches to testing the success of these BSM extensions employ … Read More
I will discuss a toy theory of gravity where the gravitational force is mediated by a scalar particle. This theory can be understood as the low-energy limit of a spontaneously broken Conformal Field Theory, and serves as an intriguing analog to General Relativity, capturing many qualitative features. In fact, it exhibits a fine-tuning problem closely resembling the cosmological constant problem. … Read More
The holographic RG of Anti-De Sitter gives a powerful clue about the underlying AdS/CFT correspondence. The question is whether similar hints can be found for the heretofore elusive holographic dual of De Sitter. The framework of stochastic inflation uses nonperturbative insight to tame bad behavior in the perturbation series of a massless scalar in DS at late times. Remarkably, this … Read More
ABSTRACT: The standard cosmological model with collisionless, cold dark matter (CDM) is remarkably successful in describing the observed large-scale structure of the Universe; however, on small scales ranging from dwarf spheroidal galaxies to galaxy clusters, dark matter halos have more cored profiles with lower central densities than those generated by simulations. An attractive solution to these anomalies is to modify … Read More
Abstract: I will discuss how the study of the Higgs decay to four leptons can be used to discover new physics. I will show how kinematic distributions can be used in ways that are complimentary to rate measurements. In particular, I will describe how this channel can be used search for CP violation in the Higgs-top sector, and how it … Read More
Abstract: Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) is a framework for modeling the infrared structure of theories whose long distance behavior is dominated by soft and collinear divergences. I will demonstrate that SCET can be made compatible with supersymmetry (SUSY), explicitly with N = 1 SUSY Yang-Mills. For contrast arguments will be given that chiral SUSY theories with Yukawa couplings, specifically the … Read More
Abstract: Models of new physics (NP) in which the Higgs mass-squared parameter is calculable and natural predict new states with masses not too far above the electroweak scale. While we tend to think of the location of the NP scale as determined largely by naturalness, UV considerations can lead us to expect certain states at a different scale than that … Read More
The LIGO detection of gravitational waves has opened a new window on the universe. I will discuss how the process of superradiance, combined with gravitational wave measurements, makes black holes into nature’s laboratories to search for new light bosons. When a bosonic particle’s Compton wavelength is comparable to the horizon size of a black hole, superradiance of these bosons into … Read More