Towards New Discoveries in Particle Physics and Cosmology

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds the research activities of Professors Kaustubh Agashe, Zackaria Chacko, Anson Hook and Raman Sundrum at the University of Maryland, College Park. It also includes a NSF-BSF collaboration, between Professors Chacko and Sundrum at the University of Maryland and Professor Michael Geller at Tel Aviv University in Israel. The principal investigators will develop and study new theories that extend the standard model of particle physics and cosmology, with three primary goals in mind. The first is to provide well-founded theoretical templates to guide experiments in fundamental physics. These range from the CERN Large Hadron Collider and future particle colliders capable of creating exotic new particles, to high-precision studies of the properties of known particles such as the neutrino, to frontline cosmological, astrophysical, and gravitational wave probes of the universe’s earliest phases and of its mysterious “dark matter” components. The second goal is to delve further into theory at the intersection of quantum mechanics, relativity and gravitation, in search of new fundamental principles. The third goal is to promote teaching, training and learning among students and postdoctoral researchers, and sharing the excitement of the research with the broader community. The fundamental laws of nature lie at the root of all the natural sciences, and therefore the cutting-edge research in this project and the broad dissemination of its findings will benefit the national interest and our modern civilization. More technically, the principal investigators will study multiple new aspects of the warped extra dimensions paradigm (and its AdS/CFT dual in terms of particle compositeness), including its early universe phase transition and gravitational wave signals, the matter/antimatter asymmetry, neutrino mass generation and properties, inflation, dark sector dynamics, and collider phenomenology. Gravitational wave cosmology will be developed to probe the early universe’s equation of state and thermal history. A strategy to detect axionic strings in the polarized CMB will be developed. New possible structures for dark matter interacting with dark radiation will be studied and applied to current cosmological anomalies. New possibilities for imprints of extremely heavy particles (far beyond collider reach) on primordial inhomogeneities, such as large scale structure, will be developed. 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.