Speaker
Francesco Serra
(Johns Hopkins University)
Description
I show that gauge theory and gravity admit modifications in which all local symmetries are broken without introducing new scales, leading to new gapless modes universally coupled to matter. The new modes have small speed, which suppresses all their interactions with matter, making them compatible with current observations. The new slow forces provide a conservative channel of new physics beyond the standard model of cosmology and particle physics, as well as a consistent and minimal framework to approximate gauge theory without gauge symmetry. I discuss the phenomenology of these new slow forces in the context of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics.
Author
Francesco Serra
(Johns Hopkins University)