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
Dolan S
(2015)
Tidal invariants for compact binaries on quasicircular orbits
in Physical Review D
Bhupal Dev P
(2015)
Kadanoff-Baym approach to flavour mixing and oscillations in resonant leptogenesis
in Nuclear Physics B
Dev PS
(2015)
Unified Explanation of the eejj, Diboson, and Dijet Resonances at the LHC.
in Physical review letters
Dickinson R
(2015)
Negative-frequency modes in quantum field theory
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Chialva D
(2015)
Cosmological implications of quantum corrections and higher-derivative extension
in Modern Physics Letters A
Banerjee S
(2015)
Prospects of heavy neutrino searches at future lepton colliders
in Physical Review D
Bezrukov F
(2015)
Living beyond the edge: Higgs inflation and vacuum metastability
in Physical Review D
Bhupal Dev P
(2015)
Corrigendum to "Flavour covariant transport equations: An application to resonant leptogenesis" [Nucl. Phys. B 886 (2014) 569]
in Nuclear Physics B
Kent C
(2015)
Hadamard renormalized scalar field theory on anti-de Sitter spacetime
in Physical Review D
Dickinson R
(2015)
Negative-frequency modes in quantum field theory
Ambru? V
(2015)
Renormalised fermion vacuum expectation values on anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
Bezrukov F
(2015)
Inflation, LHC and the Higgs boson
in Comptes Rendus. Physique
Kahlhoefer F
(2015)
WIMP dark matter and unitarity-conserving inflation via a gauge singlet scalar
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Pilaftsis A
(2015)
Mass bounds on light and heavy neutrinos from radiative minimal-flavor-violation leptogenesis
in Physical Review D
Ambrus V
(2015)
Massless rotating fermions inside a cylinder
Nolan P
(2015)
Octupolar invariants for compact binaries on quasicircular orbits
in Physical Review D
Salvio A
(2015)
Classical and quantum initial conditions for Higgs inflation
in Physics Letters B
Chatterjee A
(2015)
Bound on largest r ? 0.1 from sub-Planckian excursions of inflaton
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Fischer N
(2015)
Measurement of observables sensitive to coherence effects in hadronic Z decays with the OPAL detector at LEP
in The European Physical Journal C
Bezrukov F
(2015)
Why should we care about the top quark Yukawa coupling?
in Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics
Salvio A
(2015)
Classical and Quantum Initial Conditions for Higgs Inflation
Baer H
(2015)
Dark matter production in the early Universe: Beyond the thermal WIMP paradigm
in Physics Reports
Kanti P
(2015)
Quantum Aspects of Black Holes
Talaganis S
(2015)
Towards understanding the ultraviolet behavior of quantum loops in infinite-derivative theories of gravity
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Dasgupta M
(2015)
On jet substructure methods for signal jets
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Roszkowski L
(2015)
Prospects for dark matter searches in the pMSSM
in Journal of High Energy Physics
BĂ©langer G
(2015)
Limits on dark matter proton scattering from neutrino telescopes using micrOMEGAs
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Dolan S
(2016)
Stable photon orbits in stationary axisymmetric electrovacuum spacetimes
in Physical Review D
Dulat S
(2016)
Impact of the HERA I+II combined data on the CT14 QCD global analysis
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Bellm J
(2016)
Herwig 7.0/Herwig++ 3.0 release note
in The European Physical Journal C
Choudhury A
(2016)
Revisiting the exclusion limits from direct chargino-neutralino production at the LHC
in Physical Review D
Pilaftsis A
(2016)
Symmetries for standard model alignment in multi-Higgs doublet models
in Physical Review D
Shipley J
(2016)
Binary black hole shadows, chaotic scattering and the Cantor set
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Kimura T
(2016)
Nonlocal N=1 Supersymmetry
Dulat S
(2016)
The structure of the proton: The CT14 QCD global analysis
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Ponglertsakul S
(2016)
Solitons and hairy black holes in Einstein-non-Abelian-Proca theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime
in Physical Review D
Pilaftsis A
(2016)
Symmetry-improved 2PI approach to the Goldstone-boson IR problem of the SM effective potential
in Nuclear Physics B
Guzzi M
(2016)
Differential cross sections for top pair production at the LHC
in Nuclear and Particle Physics Proceedings
Baxter J
(2016)
Topological black holes in su ( N ) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a negative cosmological constant
in Physics Letters B
Bomark N
(2016)
Detection prospects of light NMSSM Higgs pseudoscalar via cascades of heavier scalars from vector boson fusion and Higgs-strahlung
in Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
Talaganis S
(2016)
High-energy scatterings in infinite-derivative field theory and ghost-free gravity
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Dev P
(2016)
Probing the scale of new physics by Advanced LIGO/VIRGO
in Physical Review D
Dev P
(2016)
Disambiguating seesaw models using invariant mass variables at hadron colliders
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Carena M
(2016)
CP violation in heavy MSSM Higgs scenarios
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Burns D
(2016)
Frame-covariant formulation of inflation in scalar-curvature theories
in Nuclear Physics B
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
Winstanley E
(2016)
Instability of sphaleron black holes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
Bezrukov F
(2016)
Applicability of approximations used in calculations of the spectrum of dark matter particles produced in particle decays
in Physical Review D
Mazumdar A
(2016)
Possible resolution of the domain wall problem in the NMSSM
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 |