Particle Physics: From the Early Universe to the Large Hadron Collider
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. At the LHC, physicists are searching for the Higgs boson, which represents our current best guess as to what is responsible for the origin of mass. They are also searching for a whole host of new particles such as those predicted by supersymmetry. If supersymmetry is discovered then it offers the hope also 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 and that means they will be produced in a complicated environment, probably 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 deficient 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 quantum fluctuations which somehow grow, causing 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 effect is to leave a tiny imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), a faint hum of microwave radiation in which the earth is bathed. The CMB will be studied in exquisite detail by the Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009. We hope to be 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: perhaps it is because Einstein's theory of gravity is not quite right and that is something we will explore.
Organisations
Publications
Choudhury A
(2016)
Revisiting the exclusion limits from direct chargino-neutralino production at the LHC
in Physical Review D
Benone C
(2017)
Addendum to "Absorption of a massive scalar field by a charged black hole"
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2015)
Tidal invariants for compact binaries on quasicircular orbits
in Physical Review D
Ilakovac A
(2014)
Lepton dipole moments in supersymmetric low-scale seesaw models
in Physical Review D
Ilakovac A
(2013)
Charged lepton flavor violation in supersymmetric low-scale seesaw models
in Physical Review D
Biswas T
(2013)
Cosmological perturbations from statistical thermal fluctuations
in Physical Review D
Wardell B
(2014)
Self-force via Green functions and worldline integration
in Physical Review D
Dedes A
(2017)
Radiative light dark matter
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2013)
Superradiant instabilities of rotating black holes in the time domain
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
Battye R
(2013)
Isospinning baby Skyrmion solutions
in Physical Review D
Anderle D
(2017)
Using hadron-in-jet data in a global analysis of D * fragmentation functions
in Physical Review D
Barman R
(2016)
Study of MSSM heavy Higgs bosons decaying into charginos and neutralinos
in Physical Review D
McDonald J
(2016)
Nonminimally coupled inflation with initial conditions from a preinflation anamorphic contracting era
in Physical Review D
Kent C
(2015)
Hadamard renormalized scalar field theory on anti-de Sitter spacetime
in Physical Review D
Nolan P
(2015)
Octupolar invariants for compact binaries on quasicircular orbits
in Physical Review D
Ponglertsakul S
(2016)
Stability of gravitating charged-scalar solitons in a cavity
in Physical Review D
Choudhury A
(2017)
Impact of LHC data on muon g - 2 solutions in a vectorlike extension of the constrained MSSM
in Physical Review D
Banerjee S
(2015)
Prospects of heavy neutrino searches at future lepton colliders
in Physical Review D
Mazumdar A
(2016)
Nonthermal axion dark radiation and constraints
in Physical Review D
Mazumdar A
(2016)
Nonperturbative overproduction of axionlike particles via derivative interactions
in Physical Review D
Bomark N
(2014)
3.5 keV x-ray line from decaying gravitino dark matter
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2017)
Rainbow scattering in the gravitational field of a compact object
in Physical Review D
Dev P
(2014)
New Production Mechanism for Heavy Neutrinos at the LHC
in Physical Review Letters
Ángeles Martínez R
(2016)
Ordering Multiple Soft Gluon Emissions.
in Physical review letters
Isoyama S
(2014)
Gravitational self-force correction to the innermost stable circular equatorial orbit of a Kerr black hole.
in Physical review letters
Van De Bruck C
(2013)
Constraints on nonconformal couplings from the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
in Physical review letters
Conroy A
(2015)
Wald Entropy for Ghost-Free, Infinite Derivative Theories of Gravity.
in Physical review letters
Dev PS
(2015)
Unified Explanation of the eejj, Diboson, and Dijet Resonances at the LHC.
in Physical review letters
Biswas T
(2012)
Towards singularity- and ghost-free theories of gravity.
in Physical review letters
Forshaw JR
(2012)
AdS/QCD holographic wave function for the ? meson and diffractive ? meson electroproduction.
in Physical review letters
Campanario F
(2013)
Electroweak Higgs boson plus three jet production at next-to-leading-order QCD.
in Physical review letters
Battye RA
(2014)
Evidence for massive neutrinos from cosmic microwave background and lensing observations.
in Physical review letters
Dolan S
(2017)
Spinning Black Holes May Grow Hair
in Physics
Baxter J
(2016)
Topological black holes in su ( N ) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a negative cosmological constant
in Physics Letters B
Djouadi A
(2017)
Enhanced rates for diphoton resonances in the MSSM
in Physics Letters B
Dimopoulos K
(2014)
Shaft inflation
in Physics Letters B
Salvio A
(2015)
Classical and quantum initial conditions for Higgs inflation
in Physics Letters B
Winstanley E
(2016)
Instability of sphaleron black holes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
Pilaftsis A
(2012)
On the classification of accidental symmetries of the two Higgs doublet model potential
in Physics Letters B
Kent C
(2015)
The global rotating scalar field vacuum on anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
Dimopoulos K
(2018)
Is the Big Rip unreachable?
in Physics Letters B
Salvio A
(2016)
Higgs stability and the 750 GeV diphoton excess
in Physics Letters B
Bezrukov F
(2014)
Relic gravity waves and 7 keV dark matter from a GeV scale inflaton
in Physics Letters B
Das A
(2014)
Direct bounds on electroweak scale pseudo-Dirac neutrinos from s = 8 TeV LHC data
in Physics Letters B
Ponglertsakul S
(2017)
Effect of scalar field mass on gravitating charged scalar solitons and black holes in a cavity
in Physics Letters B
Ambrus V
(2014)
Rotating quantum states
in Physics Letters B
Ashoorioon A
(2014)
Gauged M-flation after BICEP2
in Physics Letters B
Donnachie A
(2015)
Corrigendum to "pp and p ¯ p total cross sections and elastic scattering" [Phys. Lett. B 727 (4-5) (2013) 500-505]
in Physics Letters B
Banfi A
(2012)
Predictions for Drell-Yan ? ? and Q T observables at the LHC
in Physics Letters B
| 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 |