Author: Andrew Eddy NoblePublisher:
ISBN: 9780549846468
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Over the next decade, colliders and telescopes will search for new physics at the terascale. Their discoveries will unveil the fundamental dynamics that operate on length scales of less than an attometer and push our understanding of the early universe back to less than a tenth of a nanosecond after the Big Bang. Indeed, a remarkable synergy between particle physics and astrophysics has emerged with the advent of precision cosmology. Recent measurements from both fields place important constraints on new physics. The research presented here focuses on various aspects of phenomenology in realistic models of electroweak symmetry breaking. The first two chapters examine the constraints imposed on one such model, the Littlest Higgs with T Parity, by precision electroweak measurements from the Large Electron Positron collider and by percent-level measurements of the dark matter relic abundance from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. A large region of parameter space is found to be consistent with these constraints, and characteristic signals for direct and indirect detection of the generic dark matter candidate are calculated. The final chapter proposes the Higgs cubic coupling as a model-independent collider probe of the viability of electroweak baryogenesis. Barring accidental cancellations, baryogenesis at the terascale would be ruled out unless large deviations in this coupling from its Standard Model value are observed.
