Dark Energy and the Symbiosis Between Micro-physics and Cosmology (Naturally)
| Author | C. P. Burgess |
|---|---|
| Published | August 31, 2025 |
| Format | Research paper |
| Original | Read the original |
TL;DR — Lecture notes by physicist C. P. Burgess using the puzzle of dark energy to show how particle physics and cosmology now depend on each other, with a long discussion of ‘naturalness’.
Lectures given at the Les Houches Summer School “Dark Universe” (July–August 2025) and posted to arXiv (hep-th) on 31 August 2025. Burgess is at McMaster University, the Perimeter Institute and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
The notes start with what is known observationally about dark energy and the dark sector (“vanilla” cosmology), move to the effective-field-theory and power-counting tools used to reason about gravity and the early universe, and then spend a long section on technical naturalness and ‘t Hooft naturalness as a criterion for choosing among candidate theories. The last part briefly surveys approaches the author finds promising.
What it is: graduate-level lecture notes from an established theoretical physicist, on arXiv (not peer-reviewed as a paper, but standard summer-school material).
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
- Openly available on arXiv.
- Archived copy (Google Drive): Google Drive
82 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.