Thesis

The early universe as a window to particle physics

• Call:

  PT-CERN Call 2022/1

• Academic Year:

  2022

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Rui Santos

• Co-Supervisor:

  Milada Margarete Mühlleitner

• Institution:

  FCUL (Universidade de Lisboa)

• Host Institution:

  CFTC - Centro de Física Teórica e Computacional

• Abstract:

  The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will soon start its third run at a center-of-mass energy of about 14 TeV. A myriad of models has been proposed and searches at the LHC will try to cover as much parameter space of each model as possible. Many of these models also solve the most important outstanding issues of the Standard Model: provide a Dark Matter candidate and reproduce the correct matter anti-matter asymmetry in the universe. Hence, the complementarity with experiments from cosmology, astrophysics and astronomy can be used. The main focus of this work is to study phase transitions in the early universe together with gravitational wave experiments and the baryon number asymmetry as a guide to restrict the parameter space of models and thus find hints that can point us in the right direction both at the LHC and at future colliders.