Research in Elementary Particle Theory

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This award funds the research activities of Professors Pran Nath, Brent D. Nelson, and Tomasz R. Taylor at Northeastern University. After nearly forty years of experimental searches, the Higgs boson (the particle that is responsible for giving mass to all the particles in the universe) has been discovered in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). After the discovery of the Higgs boson, the LHC has been upgraded to twice its previous energy in order to search for new physics beyond the Higgs boson. It is known that our current understanding of particle physics (as encapsulated within the co-called Standard Model) is not the full story as it does not explain the existence of dark matter, does not explain why our universe has a huge excess of matter over anti-matter, and also does not explain the gravitational force. With support from this award, Professors Nath, Nelson, and Taylor will work to develop new theories that address those issues. Quite remarkably, this work will have direct experimental consequences which can be tested in future experiments at the LHC. Further, their work also has implications for cosmology, and some of their results can be tested in underground experiments looking for signals of dark matter and in satellite experiments searching for dark matter and anti-matter in the universe. Thus the research of these PI's will enhance our understanding of the basic components of the universe. This area of research advances the national interest in that it allows us to push the boundaries of science and test the laws of physics which have thus far not been tested at such large energies. The results arising from the supported research will be disseminated in a variety of ways: through posting on the archives, through publication in standard journals, through conference talks and workshops, and through more general outreach to the public. In addition there is a strong educational component to the award. The projects supported by the award will be used to train Ph.D. thesis students as well as to mentor undergraduate physics majors regarding developments in particle physics. The award will also allow the continuation of the highly successful TheoryNet outreach program, which brings theoretical physicists from New England universities into high-school physics classrooms from Rhode Island to New Hampshire, reaching an estimated 5,000 high-school students in the area.