Phenomenology of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, Supersymmetry, and the Frontiers of the Standard Model

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This award funds the research activities of Professor Stephen P. Martin at Northern Illinois University. This project will advance our knowledge of how the basic building blocks of nature interact. This includes enhanced understanding of the known fundamental subatomic particles, including the Higgs boson discovered in 2012. Martin will also study theories that go beyond the known fundamental sub-atomic particles, including a possibility known as supersymmetry. The key prediction of supersymmetry is that for each of the known fundamental particle types, there must be a "partner" with very similar properties but a much larger mass. Martin will work on strategies for discovering these new particles in experiments including the Large Hadron Collider and proposed future colliders, and will do the same for theories that provide alternatives to supersymmetry. As a result, support for this proposal advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science in one of its most fundamental directions: the discovery and understanding of new physical law. Martin will also mentor students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels on research methods, participate in the education and training of high-school teachers, and interact directly with pre-college students through judging at local and regional science fairs.More technically, the proposed research will study the equations that relate the underlying parameters of the Standard Model and the quantities measured at colliders. This will be accomplished by performing relevant calculations in a more accurate and detailed approximation than ever before. These calculations, together with more accurate data on the Higgs boson that will be obtained by the Large Hadron Collider, will allow us to quantitatively understand the dynamics of the Higgs field and test the consistency of the minimal Standard Model of particle physics. Martin will study and improve formulas relating the masses of the Higgs boson and other particles to the Higgs self-interaction strength and its interactions with other particles. Martin will also continue to study supersymmetry, which now is significantly constrained, but certainly not ruled out, by Large Hadron Collider data. Martin will work on strategies for maximizing the experimental reach of the Large Hadron Collider for new particles, by investigating novel signatures and areas of parameter space where discovery or exclusion might be particularly difficult or subtle. Martin will develop more accurate calculations and theoretical tools that will aid in the interpretation and understanding of a future discovery of supersymmetry or new stronger limits on supersymmetry, by relating the masses and interactions of the new particles to the parameters of the underlying theory. This research will affect the interpretation of experiments at the CERN LHC proton-proton collider as well as a variety of dark matter detection experiments. These experiments are major science infrastructures, and employ many researchers and students at all levels in several different science and engineering fields.