The SLAC Summer Institute (SSI) is an annual two-week-long Summer School tradition since 1973. Given the special circumstances and uncertainties with COVID-19 this year, SSI-2020 is a reduced program of just three online lectures each morning through the two weeks, without the usual afternoon programs in regular editions. We still require interested participants to register online (no registration fee) in order to receive updated online instructions. SSI is especially targeted for graduate students and postdocs while senior researchers are also welcome.
The 2020 SLAC Summer Institute will focus on the physics of neutrinos, dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves - referred to collectively as the “almost invisibles”. Their study is experimentally challenging because of their feeble interactions. They are also not well understood theoretically: the Standard Model of particle physics provides an inadequate picture of the neutrino and has no provision for dark matter nor dark energy. The SSI program will focus on the phenomenology of these nearly invisibles, as well as their connections with one another and to physics beyond the Standard Model.