The Lancaster, Manchester, Sheffield Consortium for Fundamental Physics: Particle Physics, From the Universe to the LHC
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.
The discovery at the LHC of a Higgs boson is a major milestone in our quest to understand the origin of mass. It is certainly not, however, the whole story. The LHC experiments are working hard to measure the properties of the particle they have discovered. They are also searching for new particles such as those predicted by supersymmetry. If supersymmetry is discovered then it offers the hope 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, a very complicated environment, usually 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 insufficient 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 tiny quantum fluctuations that cause 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 is to leave a tiny imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), a faint hum of microwave radiation in which the Universe is bathed. The CMB is being studied in exquisite detail by the Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009. We are 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: one possibility is that it is because Einstein's theory of gravity is not quite right and that is something we will explore.
The discovery at the LHC of a Higgs boson is a major milestone in our quest to understand the origin of mass. It is certainly not, however, the whole story. The LHC experiments are working hard to measure the properties of the particle they have discovered. They are also searching for new particles such as those predicted by supersymmetry. If supersymmetry is discovered then it offers the hope 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, a very complicated environment, usually 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 insufficient 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 tiny quantum fluctuations that cause 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 is to leave a tiny imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), a faint hum of microwave radiation in which the Universe is bathed. The CMB is being studied in exquisite detail by the Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009. We are 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: one possibility is that it is because Einstein's theory of gravity is not quite right and that is something we will explore.
Planned Impact
See the attached "Pathways to Impact" document for details.
This project has impact beyond the international scientific community mainly through the training of highly skilled graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and through extensive "outreach" activities of various kinds aimed at engaging directly with the general public, school children, teachers, policy makers and the media. Undergraduate teaching is also impacted beneficially by our research.
This project has impact beyond the international scientific community mainly through the training of highly skilled graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and through extensive "outreach" activities of various kinds aimed at engaging directly with the general public, school children, teachers, policy makers and the media. Undergraduate teaching is also impacted beneficially by our research.
Organisations
Publications
Dasgupta M
(2016)
Improved jet substructure methods: Y-splitter and variants with grooming
in Journal of High Energy Physics
McDonald J
(2016)
Warm dark matter via ultra-violet freeze-in: reheating temperature and non-thermal distribution for fermionic Higgs portal dark matter
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Bellm J
(2016)
Herwig 7.0/Herwig++ 3.0 release note
Mazumdar A
(2016)
Possible resolution of the domain wall problem in the NMSSM
in Physical Review D
Ponglertsakul S
(2016)
Stability of gravitating charged-scalar solitons in a cavity
Dasgupta M
(2016)
Jet shapes for boosted jet two-prong decays from first-principles
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Ángeles Martínez R
(2016)
Ordering Multiple Soft Gluon Emissions.
in Physical review letters
Dulat S
(2016)
Impact of the HERA I+II combined data on the CT14 QCD global analysis
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Alekhin S
(2016)
A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case
in Reports on Progress in Physics
Teimouri A
(2016)
Generalised Boundary Terms for Higher Derivative Theories of Gravity
Bellm J
(2016)
Herwig 7.0/Herwig++ 3.0 release note
in The European Physical Journal C
Shepherd B
(2016)
Dyons and dyonic black holes in su ( N ) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime
in Physical Review D
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
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Reheating in Gauss-Bonnet-coupled inflation
in Physical Review D
De Bruck C
(2016)
Disformally coupled inflation
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Dimopoulos K
(2016)
Active galaxies can make axionic dark energy
in Astroparticle Physics
Mazumdar A
(2016)
Nonthermal axion dark radiation and constraints
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2016)
Stable photon orbits in stationary axisymmetric electrovacuum spacetimes
in Physical Review D
Dimopoulos K
(2016)
Modelling inflation with a power-law approach to the inflationary plateau
in Physical Review D
Winstanley E
(2016)
Instability of sphaleron black holes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space-time
Ponglertsakul S
(2016)
Stability of gravitating charged-scalar solitons in a cavity
in Physical Review D
Ángeles-Martínez R
(2016)
Ordering multiple soft gluon emissions
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Testing coupled dark energy models with their cosmological background evolution
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Non-Gaussianity in multi-sound-speed disformally coupled inflation
Ambrus V
(2016)
Rotating fermions inside a cylindrical boundary
in Physical Review D
Abel P
(2016)
Vacuum for a massless quantum scalar field outside a collapsing shell in anti-de Sitter space-time
in General Relativity and Gravitation
Choudhury A
(2016)
Revisiting the exclusion limits from direct chargino-neutralino production at the LHC
in Physical Review D
Dickinson R
(2016)
Probabilities and signalling in quantum field theory
in Physical Review D
Lyth D
(2016)
The History of the Universe
Shipley J
(2016)
Binary black hole shadows, chaotic scattering and the Cantor set
Van De Bruck C
(2016)
Higgs inflation with a Gauss-Bonnet term in the Jordan frame
in Physical Review D
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
Guzzi M
(2016)
Differential cross sections for top pair production at the LHC
in Nuclear and Particle Physics Proceedings
Winstanley E
(2016)
Instability of sphaleron black holes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space-time
in Physics Letters B
McDonald J
(2016)
Nonminimally coupled inflation with initial conditions from a preinflation anamorphic contracting era
in Physical Review D
Charnock T
(2017)
Planck data versus large scale structure: Methods to quantify discordance
in Physical Review D
Dolan S
(2017)
Spinning Black Holes May Grow Hair
in Physics
Karamitsos S
(2017)
Frame Covariant Nonminimal Multifield Inflation
Dolan S
(2017)
Rainbow scattering in the gravitational field of a compact object
in Physical Review D
Bezrukov F
(2017)
Hiding an elephant: heavy sterile neutrino with large mixing angle does not contradict cosmology
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Conroy A
(2017)
Defocusing of null rays in infinite derivative gravity
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
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 |