Desert (particle physics)In the Grand Unified Theory of particle physics (GUT), the desert refers to a theorized gap in energy scales, between approximately the electroweak energy scale–conventionally defined as roughly the vacuum expectation value or VeV of the Higgs field (about 246 GeV)–and the GUT scale, in which no unknown interactions appear. It can also be described as a gap in the lengths involved, with no new physics below 10−18 m (the currently probed length scale) and above 10−31 m (the GUT length scale).
Belle experimentThe Belle experiment was a particle physics experiment conducted by the Belle Collaboration, an international collaboration of more than 400 physicists and engineers, at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. The experiment ran from 1999 to 2010. The Belle detector was located at the collision point of the asymmetric-energy electron–positron collider, KEKB.
AxionAn axion (ˈæksiɒn) is a hypothetical elementary particle originally postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component of cold dark matter. As shown by Gerard 't Hooft, strong interactions of the standard model, QCD, possess a non-trivial vacuum structure that in principle permits violation of the combined symmetries of charge conjugation and parity, collectively known as CP.
Micro black holeMicro black holes, also called mini black holes or quantum mechanical black holes, are hypothetical tiny (
Tachyonic fieldIn physics, a tachyonic field, or simply tachyon, is a quantum field with an imaginary mass. Although tachyonic particles (particles that move faster than light) are a purely hypothetical concept that violate a number of essential physical principles, at least one field with imaginary mass, the Higgs field, is believed to exist. Under no circumstances do any excitations of tachyonic fields ever propagate faster than light—the presence or absence of a tachyonic (imaginary) mass has no effect on the maximum velocity of signals, and so unlike faster-than-light particles there is no violation of causality.