Making the Invisible Universe Visible

Speaker: 
Marcela Carena
Institution: 
Fermilab
Date: 
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Time: 
3:30 pm
Location: 
RH 101
Abstract:
Visible elementary particles and interactions are pretty well understood and we have a powerful mathematical structure to model them. But for reasons still unknown, many fundamental features of the visible world seem to have been determined by yet-to-be-understood properties of invisibles. I will give three examples of areas where we anticipate breakthroughs on this basic dilemma:
 
·      Higgs beyond the Higgs: The discovery of the Higgs boson – a completely new type of particle -  opens the window for the existence of new forces. The Higgs discovery is just scratching the surface.
 
·      Dark secrets: The existence of dark matter raises the question of how many of the mysterious properties of the visible universe are explained by their relation to the dark sector. 
 
·      Echos of the Big Bang: The Higgs discovery established that there was a dramatic phase transition in the first instants after the Big Bang, which could be the explanation for the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe, and suggests the possibility of other phase transitions even earlier in our history. Gravitational waves may be a first window into this question.
Host: 
Kevork Abazajian