These lectures aim to explain how certain types of atomic, molecular, and optical physics experiments can have a substantial impact in modern particle physics. A central pedagogical goal is to describe, using only concepts familiar to atomic experimentalists, how new particles can lead to new terms in the atomic or molecular Hamiltonian. Well-motivated examples are discussed, including potential dark matter candidates known as “dark photons”, known and as-yet unknown Higgs bosons, and supersymmetric particles leading to CP violation. The observable effects of new Hamiltonian terms associated with these phenomena are worked out, and state-of-the-art strategies for detecting them, using atomic and molecular experiments, are described for some cases. Remarkably, the sensitivity of atomic/molecular experiments can make it possible to detect new particles even more massive than those that can be created directly at the largest high-energy colliders.
One-loop corrections to the two-body decays of the charged Higgs bosons in the real and complex NMSSM