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
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Higgs inflation with a Gauss-Bonnet term in the Jordan frame
in Physical Review D
Nolan P
(2015)
Octupolar invariants for compact binaries on quasicircular orbits
in Physical Review D
Anderle D
(2017)
Fragmentation functions beyond fixed order accuracy
in Physical Review D
Conroy A
(2014)
Geodesic completeness and homogeneity condition for cosmic inflation
in Physical Review D
Mazumdar A
(2016)
Nonthermal axion dark radiation and constraints
in Physical Review D
Dev P
(2014)
Neutrino mass and dark matter in light of recent AMS-02 results
in Physical Review D
Ilakovac A
(2013)
Charged lepton flavor violation in supersymmetric low-scale seesaw models
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2013)
Self-force via m -mode regularization and 2 + 1 D evolution. III. Gravitational field on Schwarzschild spacetime
in Physical Review D
McDonald J
(2014)
Hemispherical power asymmetry from a space-dependent component of the adiabatic power spectrum
in Physical Review D
Anderle D
(2017)
Towards semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering at next-to-next-to-leading order
in Physical Review D
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Reheating in Gauss-Bonnet-coupled inflation
in Physical Review D
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Running of the running and entropy perturbations during inflation
in Physical Review D
Dimopoulos K
(2018)
Steep eternal inflation and the swampland
in Physical Review D
Pilaftsis A
(2016)
Diphoton signatures from heavy axion decays at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
in Physical Review D
Dedes A
(2017)
Radiative light dark matter
in Physical Review D
Carr B
(2018)
Primordial black hole formation during slow reheating after inflation
in Physical Review D
Ilakovac A
(2014)
Lepton dipole moments in supersymmetric low-scale seesaw models
in Physical Review D
Dickinson R
(2016)
Probabilities and signalling in quantum field theory
in Physical Review D
Isoyama S
(2014)
Gravitational self-force correction to the innermost stable circular equatorial orbit of a Kerr black hole.
in Physical review letters
Conroy A
(2015)
Wald Entropy for Ghost-Free, Infinite Derivative Theories of Gravity.
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
Battye RA
(2014)
Evidence for massive neutrinos from cosmic microwave background and lensing observations.
in Physical review letters
Ángeles Martínez R
(2016)
Ordering Multiple Soft Gluon Emissions.
in Physical review letters
Campanario F
(2013)
Electroweak Higgs boson plus three jet production at next-to-leading-order QCD.
in Physical review letters
Dev PS
(2015)
Unified Explanation of the eejj, Diboson, and Dijet Resonances at the LHC.
in Physical review letters
Dev P
(2014)
New Production Mechanism for Heavy Neutrinos at the LHC
in Physical Review Letters
Biswas T
(2012)
Towards singularity- and ghost-free theories of gravity.
in Physical review letters
Dolan S
(2017)
Spinning Black Holes May Grow Hair
in Physics
Das A
(2014)
Direct bounds on electroweak scale pseudo-Dirac neutrinos from s = 8 TeV LHC data
in Physics Letters B
Bezrukov F
(2014)
Relic gravity waves and 7 keV dark matter from a GeV scale inflaton
in Physics Letters B
Dimopoulos K
(2018)
Is the Big Rip unreachable?
in Physics Letters B
Ambrus V
(2014)
Rotating quantum states
in Physics Letters B
Baxter J
(2016)
Topological black holes in su ( N ) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a negative cosmological constant
in Physics Letters B
Kent C
(2015)
The global rotating scalar field vacuum on anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters 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
Dickinson R
(2017)
Fock-space projection operators for semi-inclusive final 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
Djouadi A
(2017)
Enhanced rates for diphoton resonances in the MSSM
in Physics Letters B
Pilaftsis A
(2012)
On the classification of accidental symmetries of the two Higgs doublet model potential
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
Bezrukov F
(2014)
Higgs inflation at the critical point
in Physics Letters B
Dimopoulos K
(2017)
Ultra slow-roll inflation demystified
in Physics Letters B
Ambru? V
(2015)
Renormalised fermion vacuum expectation values on anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
Salvio A
(2015)
Classical and quantum initial conditions for Higgs inflation
in Physics Letters B
Dimopoulos K
(2014)
Shaft inflation
in Physics Letters B
Millington P
(2013)
Perturbative non-equilibrium thermal field theory to all orders in gradient expansion
in Physics Letters B
Choudhury S
(2014)
Primordial blackholes and gravitational waves for an inflection-point model of inflation
in Physics Letters B
Ashoorioon A
(2014)
Non-Bunch-Davis initial state reconciles chaotic models with BICEP and Planck
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 |