Cosmology and particle physics in the LHC era

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The next five years are likely see a dramatic advance in our understanding of the cosmology/particle physics interface, thanks to the potential discoveries anticipated from world-class experiments like the Large Hadron Collider, searches for new light vector bosons ("heavy photons"), the Planck and Fermi satellites, and numerous efforts at direct detection of dark matter. Our proposal aims to take advantage of a range of the hoped-for possibilities by addressing several aspects of particle-cosmology: the generation of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe in extensions of the standard model of particle physics, models of dark matter coming from a "hidden sector," models of decaying dark energy, and spontaneously broken scale invariance as a solution to the cosmological constant problem. Specifically, we intend to improve the predictions of models that can explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry relative to the properties of new particles that can be discovered at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. We will also refine the predictions of theories with several components of dark matter for discovery in direct and indirect searches. Moreover we propose to pursue topics in particle physics phenomenology, to study explanations for recent surprising experimental results concerning the production of top quarks at the Tevatron collider. We will examine topics in pure cosmology, particularly by adapting numerical codes developed for strong gravity in astrophysical settings (mergers of black holes and neutron stars) to understand the effects of strong gravity on inhomogeneous problems in cosmology, such as initial conditions for inflation. Our program explores a number of models of new physics that will be tested in the near future by current collider and dark matter search experiments. If any of these models are validated by experiment, they will give us insight into the elusive search for knowledge of physics beyond the current standard model.