The 2009 Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics

I will review our current knowledge of cosmological parameters, with dark energy as a guideline. I will briefly present some methods and preliminary results from the third year sample of the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). I will then discuss the future instruments and surveys.

The discovery that the universe is accelerating, not slowing down from the mass it contains, is the surprise that sets the initial research program of 21st Century cosmology. The Dark Energy Survey is a next generation sky survey aimed directly at understanding this mystery. We will build an extremely red sensitive 500 Megapixel camera, a 1 meter diameter, 2.2 degree field of view prime focus...

We discuss the evolution of clustering of galaxies back to z~2. For that purpose we use the VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS) data. We analyze the evolution of the projected two-point correlation function for the global galaxy population and for particular galaxy classes, with different intrinsic luminosities, spectral types, colors and other properties. For the brightest galaxies (with L>L*), for...

Supersymmetry breaking mediated by gauge interactions is regarded an attractive option due to the lack of new sources of flavor changing neutral currents other than those already present in the Standard Model. In models with gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB), the dark matter particle is the gravitino. It is produced both thermally in scatterings in the hot plasma and non-thermally...

A scenario of the big-bang nucleosynthesis is analyzed within the minimal supersymmetric standard model, which is consistent with a stau-neutralino coannihilation scenario to explain the relic abundance of dark matter. We find that we can account for the possible discrepancy of the abundance of 7Li between the observation and the prediction of the big-bang nucleosynthesis by taking the mass of...

In many viable theoretical models primordial gravitational waves are predicted as a consequence of the early evolution of the Universe. Such waves will unavoidably leave an imprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies, which would be particularly noticeable in the so-called B-mode polarization. The precise measurements of the CMB polarization anisotropies are therefore one of...

I shall review stochastic sources of gravitational waves and prospects of their detection. A stochastic background of gravitational waves is expected to arise from a superposition of a large number of unresolved gravitational-wave sources of astrophysical and cosmological origin. I shall present the status of the searches for stochastic gravitational wave sources by the LIGO and VIRGO...

In order to properly describe inflation and particle production one has to consider the underlying theory of particles and interactions. Supersymmetry is one of the most promising extensions of the Standard Model (SM). One of the typical features of supersymmetric extensions of the SM is the presence of flat directions - directions in field space, along which the scalar potential identically...

In supergravity, the construction of viable models of inflation is challenging due to the so-called $\eta$-problem, which states that the flatness of the inflaton potential is typically spoiled by supergravity corrections. We discuss strategies to overcome this problem and how they can be applied to classes of inflationary models. In this context, we also propose a new class of...

A minimal candidate for non-baryonic dark matter is provided by a single standard model singlet. The quantum mechanical effects of this singlet are explored in a model where the Higgs boson has a large non-minimal coupling to the Ricci scalar and plays the role of the inflaton. Imposition of the slow roll inflation cosmological constraints restricts the allowed values of the Higgs boson mass,...