New Portals to the Dark Sector

The existence of dark matter in the Universe has been firmly established through astrophysical and cosmological measurements, but very little is known about its particle properties. A second mystery concerns the origin of the Higgs field, which we know permeates the Universe, gives every particle its mass and produces Higgs bosons when stirred by particle accelerators, but lacks a more fundamental description.

The answers to these big questions may be contained in a dark sector, which has so far escaped detection because it only communicates with the visible part of the Universe through a weak 'portal' interaction.

I will develop new theoretical ideas for dark sector physics, focusing on the compelling possibility that the portal is provided directly by some of the particles or forces that have already been observed:

-- If one of the heaviest known particles - the Higgs boson, Z boson, or top quark - acts as portal, the dark sector could be discovered using upcoming data from the CERN Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful microscope ever built, or from searches for particle dark matter.

-- If the gravitational force acts as portal, measuring the distribution of galaxies in the Universe can give us new insights on the so-far elusive nature of dark matter. This will be achieved using the next generation of galaxy surveys.

My research will identify targets for these experiments, which have the potential to revolutionise fundamental physics in the next few years. In addition, I will interpret the delivered data, leading to progress in the construction of models describing Nature at the smallest and largest scales.