Mini Symposium on Particle Cosmology: On Dark Budgets and New Physics

by Stefan Hofmann (Nordita, Stockholm)

Tuesday 13 Nov 2007, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Berlin

Room 318 (LMU, Theresienstr. 37)

The energy budget of the Universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy. For dark matter there are well motivated particle candidates within conservative extensions of the Standard Model. We will discuss an intriguing connection between dark matter interactions with Standard Model particles and the first generation of dark matter halos. Dark energy in form of a cosmological constant is a serious challenge on both ends of the energy spectrum: in the ultra-violet it requires a consistent short-distance completion of the Standard Model, in the infra-red it challenges our understanding of effective field theories. We will introduce a new perspective on the cosmological constant problem by consistently decoupling gravitons from the vacuum energy.