A New Era in High-energy Physics

Abstract

In TeV-scale gravity, scattering of particles with center-of-mass energy of the order of a few TeV can lead to the creation of nonperturbative, extended, higher-dimensional gravitational objects: Branes. Neutral or charged, spinning or spinless, Einsteinian or supersymmetric, low-energy branes could dramatically change our picture of high-energy physics. Will we create branes in future particle colliders, observe them from ultra high energy cosmic rays, and discover them to be dark matter?

Comments: 8 pages, 2 figures. Essay submitted on Mar 26, 2002 to the Gravity Research Foundation. Awarded the third prize in the 2002 GRF competition