Subtle Tests of the Standard Model

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

Research in theoretical elementary particle physics will focus on the interactions of heavy quarks, namely charm, beauty and top quarks. Among the central mysteries of the so-called Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics are the questions of how the basic constituents of matter -- namely quarks and electrons -- acquire their masses and why they come in so-called families, which are exact replications of each other except for their masses. The mystery of the mass generation process can be studied in the most sensitive way by studying limitations of time reversal invariance. Violations of this invariance are also an essential ingredient when one tries to understand the observed preponderance of matter over antimatter in the universe as a dynamically generated feature rather than as an arbitrary initial condition. The goal of this research is to calibrate and refine the theoretical tools needed for a proper and accurate interpretation of heavy-quark data which bear on the mysteries of the origin of mass and of violations of time reversal invariance.