2020/11/04 by G. Lanfranchi, Gaia Lanfranchi, Maxim Pospelov +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Cosmology #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Electroweak interaction #Electroweak scale #Focus (optics) #Large Hadron Collider #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Physics beyond the Standard Model #Scalar field dark matter #Scale (ratio) #Theoretical physics #Weakly interacting massive particles #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1146/annurev-nucl-102419-055056
42 pages, 9 figures
arxiv created 2020/11/04 · arxiv updated 2020/11/05 · openalex publication_date 2021/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
At the dawn of a new decade, particle physics faces the challenge of explaining the mystery of dark matter, the origin of matter over antimatter in the Universe, the apparent fine-tuning of the electroweak scale, and many other aspects of fundamental physics. Perhaps the most striking frontier to emerge in the search for answers involves New Physics at mass scales comparable to that of familiar matter—below the GeV scale but with very feeble interaction strength. New theoretical ideas to address dark matter and other fundamental questions predict such feebly interacting particles (FIPs) at these scales, and existing data may even provide hints of this possibility. Emboldened by the lessons of the LHC, a vibrant experimental program to discover such physics is underway, guided by a systematic theoretical approach that is firmly grounded in the underlying principles of the Standard Model. We give an overview of these efforts, their motivations, and the decadal goals that animate the community involved in the search for FIPs, and we focus in particular on accelerator-based experiments.