Theoretical Particle Physics Research
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics
Abstract
Our overall aim is to elucidate the nature of matter and its fundamental interactions via a variety of phenomenological and theoretical studies. Of crucial importance will be the new results coming from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The proposed research will improve our ability to predict the effects of the strong interactions (QCD) on the processes that will be studied at the LHC and develop efficient methods to determine the properties of any new states of matter discovered there. Both analytical and numerical methods will be used to study the properties of hadrons, strongly interacting bound states of quarks. Our research will seek to determine what lies beyond the Standard Model of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions, with the ultimate goal of providing a fully unified theory, including gravity. The most promising candidate theories will be studied, including Grand and superstring unification and theories with additional space dimensions. Laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological implications will be analysed to determine the most sensitive experimental tests of these theories. We hope these studies will lead to a complete understanding of the origin of mass, including an understanding of the quark, charged lepton and neutrino masses, mixing angles and CP violation, as well as of the nature of dark matter. In addition to having direct relevance to the LHC program, our research will have relevance to present and future neutrino and astroparticle experiments and to astrophysical and cosmological studies. In particular a concerted effort will be made to understand the nature of the dark matter and optimise strategies for detecting both direct and indirect signals. The implications of particle physics models for early universe processed such as inflation will also be studied.
Organisations
Publications
Hamilton K
(2013)
NNLOPS simulation of Higgs boson production
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Karlberg A
(2014)
NNLOPS accurate Drell-Yan production
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Banfi A
(2012)
NLL+NNLO predictions for jet-veto efficiencies in Higgs-boson and Drell-Yan production
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Jäger B
(2012)
Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to electroweak Zjj production in the POWHEG BOX
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Bobeth C
(2013)
New Physics in <span class="cmmi-10">G</span><sub><span class="cmr-7">12</span></sub><sup><span class="cmmi-7">s</span></sup> <span class="cmr-10">: (</span><span class="overline"><span class="cmmi-10">s</span></span><span class="cmmi-10">b</span><span class="cmr-10">)(</span><span class="overline">
in Acta Physica Polonica B
Aartsen M
(2020)
Neutrinos below 100 TeV from the southern sky employing refined veto techniques to IceCube data
in Astroparticle Physics
Aartsen M
(2016)
Neutrino oscillation studies with IceCube-DeepCore
in Nuclear Physics B
Abbasi R
(2012)
NEUTRINO ANALYSIS OF THE 2010 SEPTEMBER CRAB NEBULA FLARE AND TIME-INTEGRATED CONSTRAINTS ON NEUTRINO EMISSION FROM THE CRAB USING ICECUBE
in The Astrophysical Journal
Abbasi R
(2012)
Multiyear search for dark matter annihilations in the Sun with the AMANDA-II and IceCube detectors
in Physical Review D
Aartsen M
(2014)
Multimessenger search for sources of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos: Initial results for LIGO-Virgo and IceCube
in Physical Review D
Giasemidis G
(2012)
Multigraph models for causal quantum gravity and scale dependent spectral dimension
in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Abbott B
(2017)
Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger *
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Haisch U
(2013)
MSSM: cornered and correlated
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Klaput M
(2013)
Moduli stabilising in heterotic nearly Kähler compactifications
in Journal of High Energy Physics
P. Conlon J
(2020)
Moduli Stabilisation and the Holographic Swampland
in Letters in High Energy Physics
Belyaev A
(2011)
Mixed dark matter from technicolor
in Physical Review D
Hamilton K
(2012)
MINLO: multi-scale improved NLO
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Gauld R
(2014)
Minimal Z ' explanations of the B ? K * µ + µ - anomaly
in Physical Review D
Hamilton K
(2013)
Merging H/W/Z + 0 and 1 jet at NLO with no merging scale: a path to parton shower + NNLO matching
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Abreu P
(2012)
Measurement of the proton-air cross section at vs=57 TeV with the Pierre Auger Observatory.
in Physical review letters
IceCube Collaboration
(2017)
Measurement of the multi-TeV neutrino interaction cross-section with IceCube using Earth absorption.
in Nature
Aartsen M
(2013)
Measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum with IceTop-73
in Physical Review D
Settimo M
(2012)
Measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum using hybrid events of the Pierre Auger Observatory
in The European Physical Journal Plus
Abbasi R
(2011)
Measurement of the atmospheric neutrino energy spectrum from 100 GeV to 400 TeV with IceCube
in Physical Review D
Aartsen MG
(2013)
Measurement of the atmospheric ?e flux in IceCube.
in Physical review letters
Description | Our overall aim is to elucidate the nature of matter and its fundamental interactions via a variety of phenomenological and theoretical studies. It was anticipated in the proposal that new results coming from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN would be of crucial importance and the proposed research was intended to improve our ability to predict the effects of the strong interactions (QCD) on the processes that will be studied at the LHC and develop efficient methods to determine the properties of any new states of matter discovered there. This expectation was more than adequately fulfilled with the discovery of the Higgs boson - responsible for giving mass to all known fundamental particles in the Standard Model of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. Our research also seeks to determine what lies beyond the Standard Model, with the ultimate goal of providing a fully unified theory, including gravity. Experimental progress here has not been as dramatic, in fact the Standard Model has been amazingly successful at explaining all laboratory measurements. Nevertheless there must be new physics, if only to account for the observed universe with its asymmetry between matter and antimatter, preponderance of dark over luminous matter, and inhomogeneities which grow under gravity into the large-scale structure of galaxies, clusters and superclusters ... none of which can be explained in the framework of the Standard Model. We have continued to make progress in studying promising candidate theories, including unified theories and theories with additional space dimensions. |
Exploitation Route | Our work forms part of a collective effort by theoretical physicists all over the world - each generation builds on the work of those who came before. |
Sectors | Education |
URL | http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/particle-theory |
Description | An innovative website to explain `Why String Theory?' (http://whystringtheory.com/) has received over 100,000 unique visitors. |
Sector | Education |
Impact Types | Cultural |
Description | Consolidated grant |
Amount | £717,699 (GBP) |
Funding ID | ST/P000770/1 |
Organisation | Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2017 |
End | 09/2020 |