Theoretical Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology

理论粒子物理学、天体物理学和宇宙学

• 批准号: 0701451
• 负责人: Glennys Farrar
• 金额: $ 31.09万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-12-15 至 2010-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0701451&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Theoretical; Particle; Physics; Astrophysics; Cosmology

The intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology is an exciting anddata-driven field, where a combination of imaginative basic theory and observations hasrevolutionized our understanding of the Universe. The PI?s research focuses on severalareas where the potential for new fundamental discoveries is particularly high: DarkMatter, Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays, and Galactic and Cosmic Magnetic Fields.Although Dark Matter (DM) is conventionally considered to be an as-yet-undiscoveredparticle arising in some extension of standard particle physics, instead, DM may be amanifestation of an entirely new world ? possibly as complex as our own ? whoseproperties we can only infer through gravity. For instance, if our world is a brane in ahigher dimensional space, there could be other branes nearby in some new dimension,whose presence we could only discover through their gravitational effects.Although still inconclusive, evidence has been mounting that Dark Matter may have along range interaction with itself, which the PI has recently shown would be a smokinggun for a disconnected Dark Sector. The PI, her collaborators and her students willextend simulations of cosmological structure formation and of the tidal stripping of dwarfgalaxies bound to the Milky Way, to include the possibility of new forces in the DarkSector. Detailed comparison with these and other observations will either show thepresence of a new force and allow some properties of the Dark Sector to be inferred, orwill put stringent limits on Dark Sector interactions. Related questions that will beinvestigated are: Do dark matter and dark energy interact with each other? Why is theabundance of dark matter about equal to that of ordinary matter?Another important topic of research is the highest energy particles in Nature ? ultrahighenergy cosmic rays (UHECRs). The aim is to pin down what they are, and how andwhere in the Universe they are accelerated or created. The third main effort is to mapout the Galactic Magnetic Field with much greater accuracy than ever before, by makinga combined fit of many different types of observations.The PI is involved in an international collaboration to develop state-of-the-art techniquesfor optimizing fits involving many parameters and hundreds of millions of measured datapoints. The PI intends to take the New York Schools Cosmic Particle Telescope(NYSCPT) project to the next stage of its successful partnership withNYC schools by prototyping rooftop water tank detectors and designing a full-sized ThePI is involved in mentoring high school students, teacher and student participants ofNYSCPT, women graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty. She isalso a founding participant of the NYU ?WINS? program to foster undergraduatewomen?s participation in science.

粒子物理学、天体物理学和宇宙学的交叉是一个令人兴奋和数据驱动的领域，在这个领域，富有想象力的基本理论和观测的结合彻底改变了我们对宇宙的理解。皮埃尔？S的研究集中在几个新的基础发现潜力特别高的领域：暗物质、超高能宇宙线、银河系和宇宙磁场。尽管传统上认为暗物质(DM)是一种在标准粒子物理的某些扩展中出现的尚未发现的粒子，但相反，DM可能是一个全新世界的标志？可能和我们自己的一样复杂？我们只能通过重力来推断它们的性质。例如，如果我们的世界是更高维度空间中的一层膜，那么在某个新的维度附近可能会有其他膜，我们只能通过它们的引力效应才能发现它们的存在。尽管仍然没有定论，但越来越多的证据表明，暗物质可能与自己存在着广泛的相互作用，PI最近表明，这将是一个分离的暗区的烟枪。PI、她的合作者和她的学生将扩展对宇宙结构形成和束缚在银河系上的矮星系潮汐剥离的模拟，以包括暗分割中新力量的可能性。与这些观测结果和其他观测结果进行详细的比较，要么显示出一种新力量的存在，并允许推断出暗扇区的某些性质，要么将对暗扇区相互作用施加严格的限制。将研究的相关问题包括：暗物质和暗能量是否相互作用？为什么暗物质的丰度大约等于普通物质的丰度？另一个重要的研究课题是自然界中能量最高的粒子？超高能宇宙射线(UHECR)。目的是确定它们是什么，以及它们是如何在宇宙中加速或创造的，以及它们是如何在宇宙中的哪里被加速或创造的。第三项主要工作是通过对许多不同类型的观测进行组合拟合，以比以往更高的精度绘制银河系磁场地图。PI参与了一个国际合作，开发最先进的技术，以优化涉及许多参数和数亿个测量数据点的拟合。PI打算将纽约学校宇宙粒子望远镜(NYSCPT)项目带到其与纽约市学校成功合作的下一阶段，方法是制作屋顶水箱探测器的原型并设计一个全尺寸的太空粒子望远镜，PI参与指导高中生、NYSCPT的教师和学生参与者、女研究生、博士后研究人员和初级教职员工。她也是纽约大学WINS？的创始参与者之一。培养女本科生的计划？S参与科学。