RUI: Discovering New Sources of CP Violation in Flavor Phenomenology

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This award funds the research activities of Professor Bhubanjyoti Bhattacharya at Lawrence Technological University. Where is all the antimatter? Although established theories of particle physics predict that our universe should have roughly similar amounts of matter and antimatter, we see much more matter around us than antimatter. Matter and antimatter behave similarly under a fundamental symmetry called Charge-Parity, or "CP". However, processes involving elementary particles may not respect this symmetry. Discovery of new-physics theories that violate CP will lead to a better understanding of our universe, as they will be able to explain why there is more matter than antimatter. Physicists expect to find CP-violating new physics in data collected at ongoing worldwide experiments that study elementary-particle collisions. As part of this research, Professor Bhattacharya will develop new methods of understanding the properties of different types of new physics, with an emphasis on hypothetical particles called "ALPs". These new particles are important because they can affect CP-violation measurements currently being made at collider experiments. As such, research in this area advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science, creating a deeper understanding of elementary particles, their properties, and how they interact. This project is also envisioned to have significant broader impacts. Working at Lawrence Technological University, a predominantly undergraduate institution, Professor Bhattacharya will actively engage undergraduate students in his research. By prioritizing recruitment of students from diverse backgrounds, he will promote an environment that fosters inclusion. Professor Bhattacharya's students will apply newly-developed theoretical methods to analyze data and test new hypotheses about CP violation. Students conducting research with Professor Bhattacharya will also receive training in computational thinking and acquire transferable skills that will make them successful in future academic or industrial careers. More technically, Professor Bhattacharya’s research will reveal complex phases of proposed new couplings in a variety of new-physics models. For example, focusing on data from flavor factories such as the ongoing LHCb and Belle II experiments, Professor Bhattacharya’s research will identify processes affected by ALPs and calculate their effects on CP-violating observables. Flavor-factory data provide information on the phenomenology of heavy mesons and quarkonia. Professor Bhattacharya’s research will overcome challenges in understanding this data by using approximate flavor symmetries and by quantifying the extent of flavor-symmetry breaking. His research will also develop new methods for the precise determination of CP-violating parameters within the Standard Model of particle physics, such as the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa angle gamma. Using computation-driven methods, Professor Bhattacharya and his students will identify how the data deviate from Standard-Model predictions. By explaining these deviations using new-physics models, Professor Bhattacharya's research will illuminate a path for the discovery of new sources of CP violation.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.