The Standard Model may be a valid effective field theory all the way up to the Planck scale, still it suffers from a number of theoretical and observational shortcomings. I will overview the arguments for a possible existence of new particles with masses below the electroweak scale and discuss the experimental prospects to search for them.
We review the theoretical and phenomenological motivation for axions, ALPs and other very light particles as well as the state of the art in present and future experimental searches with a particular emphasis on the possibility of them forming part of the dark matter of the Universe.
I will discuss the possibility that the nature of the dark energy driving the observed acceleration of the Universe on giga-parsec scales may be determined first through metre scale laboratory based atom interferometry experiments. I will begin by discussing why our attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem lead to the introduction of new, light degrees of freedom. In order to be...
