Searching for new particles in dense astrophysical media
In this seminar, I will discuss how we can treat various astrophysical systems, like stars and compact objects, as particle physics experiments that exist “for free” in Nature. Their relatively high densities, large volumes, and long timescales allow for even very rare microscopic processes to have large cumulative effects. In some cases, their observed properties can encode particle physics constraints that are many orders of magnitude stronger than what can be achieved in a collider experiment. Moreover, unlike the pristine conditions in a laboratory experiment, particles in astrophysical settings must propagate through dense, thermal, magnetized environments. In-medium decays and resonances can vastly enhance the production of new particles in ways that have no vacuum analog. While capturing all of these effects poses a theoretical challenge, it opens new opportunities to use existing observations to explore even more particle physics parameter space.
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