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Peter Graham

Wells Family Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics and Dr. William S. & Carol A. Davies Professor of Physics

Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWhat physics lies beyond the Standard Model and how can we discover it?

Professor Graham is broadly interested in theoretical physics beyond the Standard Model which often involves cosmology, astrophysics, general relativity, and even atomic physics. The Standard Model leaves many questions unanswered including the nature of dark matter and the origins of the weak scale, the cosmological constant, and the fundamental fermion masses. These clues are a guide to building new theories beyond the Standard Model. He recently proposed a new solution to the hierarchy problem which uses dynamical relaxation in the early universe instead of new physics at the weak scale.

Professor Graham is also interested in inventing novel experiments to discover such new physics, frequently using techniques from astrophysics, condensed matter, and atomic physics. He is a proposer and co-PI of the Cosmic Axion Spin Precession Experiment (CASPEr) and the DM Radio experiment. CASPEr uses nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to search for axion dark matter. DM Radio uses high precision magnetometry and electromagnetic resonators to search for hidden photon and axion dark matter. He has also proposed techniques for gravitational wave detection using atom interferometry.

Current areas of focus:

Theory beyond the Standard Model
Dark matter models and detection
Novel experimental proposals for discovering new physics such as axions and gravitational waves
Understanding results from experiments ranging from the LHC to early universe cosmology