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
Haisch U
(2013)
On the importance of loop-induced spin-independent interactions for dark matter direct detection
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Haisch U
(2014)
Determining the structure of dark-matter couplings at the LHC
in Physical Review D
Haisch U
(2013)
MSSM: cornered and correlated
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Haisch U
(2013)
QCD effects in mono-jet searches for dark matter
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Haisch U
(2013)
The impact of heavy-quark loops on LHC dark-matter searches
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Hamilton K
(2013)
NNLOPS simulation of Higgs boson production
in Journal of High Energy Physics
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
Hamilton K
(2012)
MINLO: multi-scale improved NLO
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Hardy E
(2013)
Retrofitted natural supersymmetry from a U(1)
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Hardy E
(2012)
Precision unification in ?SUSY with a 125GeV Higgs
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Hausegger S
(2016)
Footprints of Loop I on Cosmic Microwave Background maps
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
He Y
(2014)
Heterotic model building: 16 special manifolds
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Hooper D
(2011)
Cosmogenic photons as a test of ultra-high energy cosmic ray composition
in Astroparticle Physics
Hunt P
(2014)
Reconstruction of the primordial power spectrum of curvature perturbations using multiple data sets
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Hunt P
(2015)
Search for features in the spectrum of primordial perturbations using Planck and other datasets
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
IceCube Collaboration
(2017)
Measurement of the multi-TeV neutrino interaction cross-section with IceCube using Earth absorption.
in Nature
IceCube Collaboration
(2012)
An absence of neutrinos associated with cosmic-ray acceleration in ?-ray bursts.
in Nature
IceCube Collaboration
(2013)
Evidence for high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos at the IceCube detector.
in Science (New York, N.Y.)
Jäger B
(2014)
Electroweak ZZjj production in the Standard Model and beyond in the POWHEG-BOX V2
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
Jäger B
(2013)
Electroweak W+W- jj prodution at NLO in QCD matched with parton shower in the POWHEG-BOX
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Kahlhoefer F
(2014)
Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kahlhoefer F
(2015)
On the interpretation of dark matter self-interactions in Abell 3827
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Karlberg A
(2014)
NNLOPS accurate Drell-Yan production
in Journal of High Energy Physics
| 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 | 10/2017 |
| End | 09/2020 |