Phenomenology of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, Supersymmetry, and the Frontiers of the Standard Model

Northern Illinois University, Dekalb IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds the research activities of Professor Stephen P. Martin at Northern Illinois University. This project will advance our knowledge of the basic building blocks of matter and the forces of interaction between them. Among the fundamental subatomic particles is the Higgs boson, which was discovered in 2012 and is now the subject of intense studies at the Large Hadron Collider. Professor Martin will pursue an enhanced understanding of the Higgs boson and other subatomic particles. He will also study theories that extend the known particles and forces, including a possibility known as supersymmetry. The central prediction of this theory is that for each of the known types of fundamental particles, there must be another type with very similar properties but which are much heavier. Professor Martin will work on strategies for discovering such new particles at the Large Hadron Collider and proposed future collider experiments. He will also do the same for theories that provide alternatives to supersymmetry. These activities advance the national interest by promoting our understanding of how nature works at the most fundamental level. This project will also have broader impacts. Professor Martin will mentor and train students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels on relevant methods of research. He will also interact directly with pre-college students and other interested members of the public through exhibitions and judging at local and regional science fairs. More technically, Martin will compute multi-loop corrections to the effective potential that governs the scalar field associated with the Higgs boson. He will extend existing results for the effective potential in general non-supersymmetric theories to include supersymmetric models, using regularization methods that respect supersymmetric invariance. He will also develop methods for evaluating three-loop contributions to particle masses, including the Higgs boson and the W and Z bosons of the Standard Model of particle physics. He will study non-minimal theories of supersymmetry, exploring possibilities that address a puzzle called the little hierarchy problem. He will study the production and decay of supersymmetric particles at proposed future proton-proton and electron-positron colliders, to understand the reach of those experiments for making new discoveries. He also plans to continue studies of new particles in non-supersymmetric theories, including, for example, new vector-like leptons. 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.