RUI: Neutrino, Collider, and Dark Matter Phenomenology

这个Rui奖资助了山姆·休斯顿州立大学的James B.Dent和Joel W.Walker教授的研究活动。在他们的研究中，Dent和Walker教授致力于建立桥梁，将理论物理的进步与中微子、对撞机和暗物质物理领域的实验结果联系起来。中微子是在恒星环境中通过宇宙辐射和核衰变过程产生的轻快运动的粒子，但它们的相互作用非常弱，以至于它们的许多性质仍然是个谜。在对撞机上，尤其是现在的大型强子对撞机上，熟悉的粒子以足够凶猛的速度撞击，以重现早期宇宙的条件。众所周知，通过引力效应，暗物质代表了宇宙能量的四分之一，但我们从未直接观察到构成暗物质的一个或多个粒子。将这些努力联系在一起的是更好地了解物质的基本组成部分及其相互作用的愿望。因此，这一领域的研究通过促进基础科学的进步来促进国家利益。丹特和沃克教授将开发新的物理模型，提出改进的搜索策略，贡献软件工具，并解释新观测带来的限制。通过对山姆·休斯顿州立大学本科生的密切监督，产生了重大的更广泛的影响。萨姆·休斯顿州立大学是一所以本科生为主的机构，服务于不同的学生群体。Dent和Walker教授致力于提供一种环境，通过参与期刊出版物和会议演讲，并通过为研究生在主要研究型大学的博士项目中蓬勃发展创造基础，来发展他们的学生的分析、数值和创造性技能。更具体地说，相干弹性中微子-原子核散射过程(2017年首次观察到)将用于限制标准模型之外的物理，包括由巨大的稀有中微子诱导的短基线振荡，以及光介体和有效场论环境中的非标准相互作用。为了支持这些目标，Dent教授和Walker教授担任米切尔研究所反应堆中微子实验(MINER)合作的理论顾问，贡献分析和解释。在大型强子对撞机上，由于超越标准模型的新物理还没有以明显的方式显现，社区必须将注意力转移到可能在运动学上隐藏的过程上，这需要大量的统计数据来区分，或者本质上是罕见的。该提案通过直接分析和贡献公共软件和算法工具，包括开发一种新的比例尺不变的喷气集群式算法，推动了这一全球努力。为了辨别暗物质的本质，丹特和沃克教授将研究目前和未来直接探测暗物质的能力，以表征暗物质的性质，如质量、自旋和非引力相互作用，包括不可约中微子背景的影响。这项研究还将扩展到更一般的暗区框架，包括为寻找这种粒子而设计的各种实验，特别是在亚GeV质量范围内。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This RUI award funds the research activities of Professors James B. Dent and Joel W. Walker at Sam Houston State University.In their research, Professors Dent and Walker work to build bridges that connect advances in theoretical physics to experimental results in the areas of neutrino, collider, and dark-matter physics. Neutrinos are light, fast-moving particles produced in stellar environment via cosmic radiation and in nuclear decay processes, but they interact so weakly that many of their properties remain mysterious. At colliders, and especially now at the Large Hadron Collider, familiar particles impact with sufficient ferocity to recreate conditions of the early universe. Through its gravitational effects, dark matter is known to represent a quarter of the energy of the universe, but we have never directly observed the particle or particles of which this dark matter is made. Connecting each of these efforts is a desire to better understand the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions. Thus, research in this area advances the national interest by fostering the progress of basic science. Professors Dent and Walker will develop new physical models, propose improved search strategies, contribute software tools, and interpret constraints imposed by new observations. Significant broader impacts are realized through the close supervision of undergraduate research students at Sam Houston State University, a primarily undergraduate institution that serves a diverse student population. Professors Dent and Walker are dedicated to providing an environment that develops the analytical, numerical, and creative skills of their students through participation in journal publications and conference presentations and by creating a foundation for graduates to thrive in doctoral programs at major research universities.More specifically, the process of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (observed for the first time in 2017) will be used to place limits on physics beyond the Standard Model, including short-baseline oscillations induced by a massive sterile neutrino, and on non-standard interactions in the light-mediator and effective field theory contexts. In support of these goals, Professors Dent and Walker serve as theory advisors with the Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER) collaboration, contributing analysis and interpretation. At the Large Hadron Collider, since new physics beyond the Standard Model is not yet manifest in obvious ways, the community must shift attention to processes which may be kinematically concealed, which require large statistics for discrimination, or which are intrinsically rare. This proposal advances that worldwide effort via direct analysis and by contributing public software and algorithmic tools, including the development of a new scale-invariant jet-clustering algorithm. Toward the goal of discerning the nature of dark matter, Professors Dent and Walker will investigate the capacity for current and future attempts at direct detection to characterize dark-matter properties such as mass, spin, and non-gravitational interactions, including the effects of an irreducible neutrino background. This study will also extend to more general dark-sector frameworks, including the wide variety of experiments designed to search for such particles, especially in the sub-GeV mass range.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.