Beyond the Standard Model: Searching for New Physics in Cosmology and Colliders

该奖项资助纽约大学尼尔·韦纳教授的研究活动。旨在在新领域测试物理学的广泛实验努力已达到或接近成熟。这些实验包括希望探测神秘的“暗物质”本质的实验。暗物质构成了宇宙中的大部分物质，但它不发光，因此不会与构成恒星、行星和我们自己的更传统的物质产生强烈的相互作用。与此同时，新的实验努力旨在探索更高能量的物理，试图测试和寻找新的非常弱相互作用的自然状态。这种活动的结果使我们进入了一个时期，在这个时期，我们对自然世界的许多方面的知识将得到极大的扩大。韦纳教授的研究活动旨在理解这些新数据。他将从事一项广泛的理论研究，可以利用新出现的数据财富，这将有助于绘制一些可能追求的下一个实验方向。因此，这项研究对支持美国基础科学的进步至关重要。从技术上讲，韦纳教授将尝试量化标准模型之外的各种粒子物理新模型的特征。在与大型强子对撞机（LHC）相关的物理学背景下，他将更彻底、更精确地探索狄拉克高规子的性质。这些粒子出现在超对称理论的不同版本中，是实验中最难探测的粒子之一。目前，对这些理论中希格斯粒子质量的定量理解仍然缺乏，在研究这个主题的过程中，韦纳教授希望获得精确的预测，这些预测可能会在大型强子对撞机上得到证实或排除。类似地，各种声称与暗物质有关的异常现象仍未得到解决，包括最近声称星系和星系团的x射线辐射过量，达到3.5千电子伏特。虽然解释这一现象的最自然的场景——即衰变的遗留粒子——似乎受到高度限制，但暗物质碰撞激发产生的解释仍然相对未被探索。作为这项研究的一部分，韦纳教授将更定量地追求这些想法，包括重新分析在碰撞激发的背景下提出这些主张的原始数据。此外，他将试图了解是否有任何新的系统可以帮助澄清这个信号的来源。最后，韦纳教授将努力开发新的场景，在拟议的实验中可测试，但目前的分析是次优的。这可能包括扩展对新的共振或暗物质电磁信号的搜索。在这样做的过程中，韦纳教授的目标是利用我们在实验物理方面的现有投资，以产生最大的科学产出。

This award funds the research activities of Professor Neal Weiner at New York University.A wide range of experimental efforts directed at testing physics at new frontiers are at or nearing maturity. These include experiments which hope to probe the nature of the mysterious "dark matter" which makes up most of the matter in the universe but which is not luminous and thus does not interact strongly with the kinds of more traditional matter out of which stars, planets, and we ourselves are composed. Along with this are new experimental efforts which aim at probing physics at ever-higher energies in an attempt to test and search for new very weakly interacting states of nature. The result of this activity has led us to a period in which our knowledge of many aspects of the natural world will be dramatically enlarged. Professor Weiner's research activities are aimed at making sense of this new data. He will engage in a broad theoretical study that can capitalize on the wealth of new emerging data, and which will help to chart some of the next experimental directions that might be pursued. As such, this research is critical for supporting the progress of basic science in the United States.More technically, Professor Weiner will attempt to quantify features of a variety of new models for particle physics beyond the Standard Model. Within the context of physics related to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), he will explore more thoroughly and at higher precision the properties of Dirac gauginos. These particles appear in versions of supersymmetric theories and are some of the most challenging to probe experimentally. At the present time, a quantitative understanding of the Higgs mass in these theories is still lacking, and in pursuing this topic, Professor Weiner hopes to obtain precise predictions that might be confirmed or excluded at the LHC. Similarly, a variety of anomalies claimed in connection to dark matter remain unresolved, including a recent claim of excess X-ray emission at 3.5 keV from galaxies and galaxy clusters. While the most natural scenario for explaining this --- namely, a decaying relic particle --- seems highly constrained, explanations arising from collisional excitation of dark matter are still relatively unexplored. As part of this research, Professor Weiner will pursue these ideas more quantitatively, including re-analyzing the original data from which the claims were made in the context of collisional excitations. Furthermore, he will attempt to understand whether any new systems may help clarify the origin of this signal. Finally, Professor Weiner will endeavor to develop new scenarios that are testable within proposed experiments, but for which current analyses are sub-optimal. This will likely include extensions of searches for new resonances, or electromagnetic signals of dark matter. In doing so, Professor Weiner aims to leverage our existing investments in experimental physics in order to yield the maximal scientific output.