Topics in Beyond the Standard Model Phenomenology

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This award funds the research activities of Professors Ikaros Bigi, Antonio Delgado, and Adam Martin at the University of Notre Dame. While often called an atom-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can also be described as the world's biggest microscope. By studying collisions of particles at the highest energies, particle physicists can gain insight into the building blocks of the universe at the scale of a billionth of a billionth of a meter. In coming years, the LHC will explore even smaller scales and with improved accuracy. Combining these results with results from complimentary terrestrial and astrophysical experiments, particle physicists will hunt for new particles and forces. As part of this global effort, the research of Professors Bigi, Delgado, and Martin aims to illuminate the fundamental rules governing the universe, and thereby advances the national interest by promoting the progress of fundamental science in the United States. In particular, Professors Bigi, Delgado, and Martin focus on investigating what new phenomena may exist, how we might measure it at the LHC or in other experiments, and how it can be connected to pressing questions such as the identity of dark matter or why there is more matter than antimatter. Specific directions to be explored include effective field theory, new LHC searches, and flavor physics. This work is also envisioned to have broad impact in that it will guide future experimental searches and involve close collaboration with experimenters, both locally and at the CERN laboratory where the LHC is located. Professors Bigi, Delgado, and Martin will also continue their activities lecturing at graduate-physics summer schools, organizing workshops and conferences around the world, and teaching particle physics to high-school teachers and students through QuarkNet, both nationally and internationally.More technically, Professor Martin will use Hilbert-series techniques to improve effective field theory-based searches for new phenomena. Professor Delgado will explore novel resonances signals at the LHC, both in the context of simplified models and from a "clockwork" dimension. Together, Professors Martin and Delgado will explore models of Dirac supersymmetry and investigate novel ways to hunt for dark matter, such as through interference in visible final states at the LHC or in high nuclear-recoil bins of direct-detection experiments. Professor Bigi will continue his work investigating the effects of new physics in flavor-violating processes. Such processes are rare in the Standard Model and can therefore provide a smoking-gun signal of new physics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.