Colloquia

Cosmology and the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider aims at revealing physics at energies in the TeV range and distance scales shorter than 10^(-17) cm. In the cosmological context, this physics is responsible for the properties of the cosmic medium at temperatures exceeding 100 GeV, which correspond to times less than 10^(-10) seconds after the Big Bang.

It is conceivable that this was the epoch of the generation of dark matter and/or matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. Thus, the LHC may well shed light on these long-standing cosmological problems.

We discuss several popular scenarios for the generation of dark matter and/or matter-antimatter asymmetry, which will be confirmed (hopefully) or ruled out by the LHC.