Searching for New Physics with Colliders and Cosmology

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Particle physics attempts to describe the fundamental building blocks of nature and the laws that govern their behaviour. This has led to the development of the Standard Model (SM) which explains the vast majority of phenomena that we see around us. We know, however, that the SM cannot be the full explanation of how the universe works. It cannot explain the dark matter that makes up more than 80% of the matter in the universe, and it cannot explain the excess of matter over antimatter. I propose to develop new techniques for use at current and future experiments that can answer these fundamental questions. One of the most important tools used in building the SM is data from particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is a global effort with significant investment by the Canadian physics community. I will develop new methods to exploit the data from LHC that could potentially lead to a groundbreaking discovery. For example, theories of dark matter predict new particles that are invisible when they are produced, but decay into visible particles after flying through part of the experiment. These signatures require development of new techniques for discovery. I also plan to use the Higgs boson as a way to explore new phenomena. One possibility is the hypothetical decay of the Higgs to new long lived particles, and another is to make more precise measurements of the Higgs that may display subtle deviations from the SM predictions. Even a small deviation would signal the breakdown of the SM and discovery of new laws of nature. Another tool I plan to use is cosmology. The experimental detection of gravitational waves in 2016 was a groundbreaking discovery, and I plan to continue my exploration of how gravitational waves can be used to probe the dynamics of our universe in the first instants after the big bang. Models that explain dark matter or the Higgs mass sometimes have new particles that do not feel any of our familiar forces except gravity, making them extremely hard to verify experimentally. I propose to use gravitational waves and other astrophysical probes to see how these models can be probed in the near future. Developing new tools and techniques in Canada would enhance the country's profile in the global scientific community. Furthermore, all the research proposed here will be done in collaboration with students and postdoctoral fellows as part of an effort to train future scientific leaders. After completing studies in particle physics, students possess unique technical training and problem solving abilities in areas such as statistics, computing, and machine learning. Recently, a large fraction of graduates from the field who do not continue in academia have become data scientists, a highly in demand area underlying the technology of global giants such as Google and Canadian leaders like Shopify. Having strong particle physics research groups would make Canada a hub for developing the technologies of the future.