Bounds on the Effective Theory of Gravity in Models of Particle Physics and Cosmology

Download or read book Bounds on the Effective Theory of Gravity in Models of Particle Physics and Cosmology written by Michael Atkins and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The effective theory of quantum gravity coupled to models of particle physics is being probed by cutting edge experiments in both high energy physics (searches for extra dimensions) and cosmology (testing models of inflation). This thesis derives new bounds that may be placed on these models both theoretically and experimentally. In models of extra dimensions, the internal consistency of the theories at high energies are investigated via perturbative unitarity bounds. Similarly it is shown that recent models of Higgs inflation suffer from a breakdown of perturbative unitarity during the inflationary period. In addition, the thesis uses the latest LHC data to derive the first ever experimental bound on the size of the Higgs boson's non-minimal coupling to gravity.