High Energy Physics

Black hole superradiance is a fascinating process in general relativity and a unique window on ultralight particles beyond the standard model. Bosons -- such as axions and dark photons -- with Compton wavelengths comparable to size of astrophysical black holes grow exponentially to form large clouds spinning down the black hole in the process and produce monochromatic continuous gravitational wave radiation. In the era of gravitational wave astronomy and increasingly sensitive observations of astrophysical black holes and their properties superradiance of new light particles is a promising avenue to search for new physics in regimes inaccessible to terrestrial experiments. This workshop will bring together theorists data analysts and observers in particle physics gravitational wave astronomy strong gravity and high energy astrophysics to explore the signatures of black hole superradiance and to study the current and future possibilities of searching for new particles with black holes.

The past decade has witnessed significant breakthroughs in understanding the quantum nature of black holes, with insights coming from quantum information theory, numerical relativity, and string theory.  At the same time, astrophysical and gravitational wave observations can now provide an unprecedented window into the phenomenology of black hole horizons.  This workshop seeks to bring together leading experts in these fields to explore new theoretical and observational opportunities and synergies that could improve our physical understanding of quantum black holes.

In the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in small scale high sensitivity experiments that look for new forces and new particles beyond the Standard Model. They promise to expand our understanding of the Cosmos and possibly explain mysteries such as Dark matter in a way that is complementary to colliders and other large scale experiments. There is a number of different physics motivations and approaches currently being explored in many on-going and newly proposed experiments and they often share common experimental techniques.Many workshops in this field focus on the theory motivations behind these experiments without emphasis on the details of the experimental techniques that enable precision measurements. There is also substantial experimental expertise across many fields, often outside of fundamental physics community, that can be relevant to ongoing and proposed experiments.Thus, we decided to organize the workshop around some of the common experimental techniques. We hope it will be educational for both experimentalists and theorists and lead to discussions on the best way forward. We would like to bring together experimentalists with different expertise in the hope that it will lead to new ideas through interdisciplinary interactions. For theorists, we expect it to provide better appreciation of the challenges and opportunities in improving the sensitivity of precision measurement experiments.

Continuing investment in fundamental weakly-coupled science, primarily through neutrino experiments and dark matter searches, prompts the question: is the maximum possible scientific information going to be extracted from these experiments? Are there new creative uses of the existing and planned facilities that would advance our knowledge of fundamental physics? Are there physics targets that have been overlooked by the current approach? This workshop will attempt to advance discussion of these topics, and concentrate on non-traditional ideas and alternative methods of probing new physics, both at underground laboratories and at high-intensity accelerators. The workshop aims to complement the large international conference, Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics 2017, to be held in Sudbury ON July 24-28, by directly preceding that meeting.