The Lancaster, Manchester, Sheffield Consortium for Fundamental Physics: Particle Physics, From the Universe to the LHC
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Particle physics is all about understanding the elementary building blocks of nature and their interactions. Over the years, physicists have developed the Standard Model of particle physics, which is extremely successful in describing a very wide range of natural phenomena from things as basic as how light works and why atoms form through to the complicated workings inside stars and the synthesis of nuclei in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. However, we know that the Standard Model is not the whole story for it leaves many questions unanswered. Our proposal focuses on these unanswered questions and the way that scientists hope to address them in the coming years using experiments like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or observations like those that will be made using the Planck satellite.
The discovery at the LHC of a Higgs boson is a major milestone in our quest to understand the origin of mass. It is certainly not, however, the whole story. The LHC experiments are working hard to measure the properties of the particle they have discovered. They are also searching for new particles such as those predicted by supersymmetry. If supersymmetry is discovered then it offers the hope to explain the origin of the Dark Matter that makes up a large fraction of the material that is known to exist in the Universe. The scientists in our consortium will explore the theory of supersymmetry and dark matter. We will use data from experiments like the LHC to identify which of the many possible variants of supersymmetry are allowed by the data and to suggest new ways to explore those models in experiments. Any "new physics" produced at the LHC will be produced as a result of smashing two protons into each other, a very complicated environment, usually in association with "jets" of other particles. Members of our consortium will explore how we can make use of these jets to learn more about the associated new physics: the better we understand the environment in which new physics occurs, the more we are able to learn about the new physics itself. This is a complicated business that often necessitates computer simulations of particle collisions. Our members are experts in these simulations and have plans on how the make them more accurate, which is necessary if we are to make the most of the exciting data from the LHC.
The Standard Model of particle physics is also insufficient when it comes to explaining the early history of the Universe, when it was hot and dense. The evidence is now very strong that the history began with an era of accelerating expansion, called inflation. We are experts on inflation and its consequences. Inflation makes the Universe featureless, except for tiny quantum fluctuations that cause the density of matter and energy in the Universe to vary with position. These initially small variations grow to become observable effects. One effect is the formation of the billions of galaxies that populate the night sky. Another is to leave a tiny imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), a faint hum of microwave radiation in which the Universe is bathed. The CMB is being studied in exquisite detail by the Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009. We are at the forefront of interpreting the Planck data in the hope of pinning down which of the various theories of the early universe are ruled out and which remain viable. The deficiencies of the Standard Model extend still further for it does not explain the amount nor even the existence of ordinary matter. Our scientists will use this to constrain possible physics beyond the Standard Model and to do that they need to master the dynamics of the Universe shortly after the end of inflation. Last but not least, we hope to understand better the mysterious "Dark Energy" that drives the current and future acceleration of the Universe: one possibility is that it is because Einstein's theory of gravity is not quite right and that is something we will explore.
The discovery at the LHC of a Higgs boson is a major milestone in our quest to understand the origin of mass. It is certainly not, however, the whole story. The LHC experiments are working hard to measure the properties of the particle they have discovered. They are also searching for new particles such as those predicted by supersymmetry. If supersymmetry is discovered then it offers the hope to explain the origin of the Dark Matter that makes up a large fraction of the material that is known to exist in the Universe. The scientists in our consortium will explore the theory of supersymmetry and dark matter. We will use data from experiments like the LHC to identify which of the many possible variants of supersymmetry are allowed by the data and to suggest new ways to explore those models in experiments. Any "new physics" produced at the LHC will be produced as a result of smashing two protons into each other, a very complicated environment, usually in association with "jets" of other particles. Members of our consortium will explore how we can make use of these jets to learn more about the associated new physics: the better we understand the environment in which new physics occurs, the more we are able to learn about the new physics itself. This is a complicated business that often necessitates computer simulations of particle collisions. Our members are experts in these simulations and have plans on how the make them more accurate, which is necessary if we are to make the most of the exciting data from the LHC.
The Standard Model of particle physics is also insufficient when it comes to explaining the early history of the Universe, when it was hot and dense. The evidence is now very strong that the history began with an era of accelerating expansion, called inflation. We are experts on inflation and its consequences. Inflation makes the Universe featureless, except for tiny quantum fluctuations that cause the density of matter and energy in the Universe to vary with position. These initially small variations grow to become observable effects. One effect is the formation of the billions of galaxies that populate the night sky. Another is to leave a tiny imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), a faint hum of microwave radiation in which the Universe is bathed. The CMB is being studied in exquisite detail by the Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009. We are at the forefront of interpreting the Planck data in the hope of pinning down which of the various theories of the early universe are ruled out and which remain viable. The deficiencies of the Standard Model extend still further for it does not explain the amount nor even the existence of ordinary matter. Our scientists will use this to constrain possible physics beyond the Standard Model and to do that they need to master the dynamics of the Universe shortly after the end of inflation. Last but not least, we hope to understand better the mysterious "Dark Energy" that drives the current and future acceleration of the Universe: one possibility is that it is because Einstein's theory of gravity is not quite right and that is something we will explore.
Planned Impact
See the attached "Pathways to Impact" document for details.
This project has impact beyond the international scientific community mainly through the training of highly skilled graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and through extensive "outreach" activities of various kinds aimed at engaging directly with the general public, school children, teachers, policy makers and the media. Undergraduate teaching is also impacted beneficially by our research.
This project has impact beyond the international scientific community mainly through the training of highly skilled graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and through extensive "outreach" activities of various kinds aimed at engaging directly with the general public, school children, teachers, policy makers and the media. Undergraduate teaching is also impacted beneficially by our research.
Organisations
Publications
Battye R
(2021)
Simulations of domain walls in Two Higgs Doublet Models
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Dasgupta M
(2015)
Small-radius jets to all orders in QCD
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Di Valentino E
(2021)
Snowmass2021 - Letter of interest cosmology intertwined I: Perspectives for the next decade
in Astroparticle Physics
Di Valentino E
(2021)
Snowmass2021 - Letter of interest cosmology intertwined II: The hubble constant tension
in Astroparticle Physics
Di Valentino E
(2021)
Snowmass2021 - Letter of interest cosmology intertwined IV: The age of the universe and its curvature
in Astroparticle Physics
MartÃnez R
(2018)
Soft gluon evolution and non-global logarithms
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Ponglertsakul S
(2016)
Solitons and hairy black holes in Einstein-non-Abelian-Proca theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime
in Physical Review D
Macedo C
(2018)
Spectral lines of extreme compact objects
in Physical Review D
Akcay S
(2017)
Spin-orbit precession for eccentric black hole binaries at first order in the mass ratio
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Dolan S
(2017)
Spinning Black Holes May Grow Hair
in Physics
Hoffmann J
(2021)
Squared quartic hilltop inflation
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2015)
Stability of black holes in Einstein-charged scalar field theory in a cavity
in Physical Review D
Ponglertsakul S
(2016)
Stability of gravitating charged-scalar solitons in a cavity
in Physical Review D
Van De Bruck C
(2015)
Stabilizing the Planck mass shortly after inflation
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2016)
Stable photon orbits in stationary axisymmetric electrovacuum spacetimes
in Physical Review D
Chen C
(2014)
Standard model explanation of the ultrahigh energy neutrino events at IceCube
in Physical Review D
Dimopoulos K
(2018)
Steep eternal inflation and the swampland
in Physical Review D
Barman R
(2016)
Study of MSSM heavy Higgs bosons decaying into charginos and neutralinos
in Physical Review D
Lloyd-Stubbs A
(2020)
Sub-Planckian ? 2 inflation in the Palatini formulation of gravity with an R 2 term
in Physical Review D
McDonald J
(2014)
Sub-Planckian two-field inflation consistent with the Lyth bound
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Biswas T
(2014)
Super-inflation, non-singular bounce, and low multipoles
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Brax P
(2020)
Swampland and screened modified gravity
in Physical Review D
Pilaftsis A
(2016)
Symmetries for standard model alignment in multi-Higgs doublet models
in Physical Review D
Pilaftsis A
(2015)
Symmetry Improved 2PI Effective Action and the Infrared Divergences of the Standard Model
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Pilaftsis A
(2016)
Symmetry-improved 2PI approach to the Goldstone-boson IR problem of the SM effective potential
in Nuclear Physics B
Sloan D
(2020)
T -model inflation and bouncing cosmology
in Physical Review D
Van De Bruck C
(2017)
Testing coupled dark energy models with their cosmological background evolution
in Physical Review D
Hryczuk A
(2019)
Testing dark matter with Cherenkov light - prospects of H.E.S.S. and CTA for exploring minimal supersymmetry
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Dev P
(2015)
TeV Scale Lepton Number Violation and Baryogenesis
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Dev P
(2015)
TeV scale model for baryon and lepton number violation and resonant baryogenesis
in Physical Review D
Bhupal Dev P
(2015)
TeV-scale left-right symmetry and large mixing effects in neutrinoless double beta decay
in Physical Review D
McDonald J
(2016)
The 750 GeV resonance as non-minimally coupled inflaton: Unitarity violation and why the resonance is a real singlet scalar
in Physics Letters B
Kent C
(2015)
The global rotating scalar field vacuum on anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
Lyth D
(2016)
The History of the Universe
Dayal P
(2015)
THE QUEST FOR CRADLES OF LIFE: USING THE FUNDAMENTAL METALLICITY RELATION TO HUNT FOR THE MOST HABITABLE TYPE OF GALAXY
in The Astrophysical Journal
Dulat S
(2016)
The structure of the proton: The CT14 QCD global analysis
in EPJ Web of Conferences
De Bruck C
(2015)
The variation of the fine-structure constant from disformal couplings
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Ambru? V
(2017)
Thermal expectation values of fermions on anti-de Sitter space-time
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Dimopoulos K
(2017)
Thermal inflation with a thermal waterfall scalar field coupled to a light spectator scalar field
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2015)
Tidal invariants for compact binaries on quasicircular orbits
in Physical Review D
Dasgupta M
(2018)
Top tagging: an analytical perspective
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Baxter J
(2016)
Topological black holes in su ( N ) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a negative cosmological constant
in Physics Letters B
Battye R
(2022)
Towards robust constraints on axion dark matter using PSR J1745-2900
in Physical Review D
Anderle D
(2017)
Towards semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering at next-to-next-to-leading order
in Physical Review D
Talaganis S
(2015)
Towards understanding the ultraviolet behavior of quantum loops in infinite-derivative theories of gravity
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Roszkowski L
(2017)
Towards understanding thermal history of the Universe through direct and indirect detection of dark matter
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Chen C
(2015)
Two-component flux explanation for the high energy neutrino events at IceCube
in Physical Review D
Dimopoulos K
(2017)
Ultra slow-roll inflation demystified
in Physics Letters B
Dev PS
(2015)
Unified Explanation of the eejj, Diboson, and Dijet Resonances at the LHC.
in Physical review letters
Anderle D
(2017)
Using hadron-in-jet data in a global analysis of D * fragmentation functions
in Physical Review D
Description | Progress on many fronts towards a better understanding of the universe, by developing theoretical models constrained by data from the LHC and cosmology experiments such as Planck. |
Exploitation Route | By continued research. |
Sectors | Education |
Description | Researchers supported by this award have been very active in outreach activities for the general public, schools and scientists from other fields. |
First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
Sector | Education |
Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |