Physicists at the University of Warwick are smashing particles together at the Large Hadron Collider and tracking ghostly neutrinos through Japanese mountains to test the limits of the Standard Model of particle physics. The problem is that the Standard Model, while remarkably successful, cannot explain why the universe contains more matter than antimatter, what dark matter is, or why neutrinos have mass. This programme attacks those gaps from five directions at once. At CERN, the team hunts for new heavy bosons and studies how the Higgs boson decays into tau leptons—a precise measurement that could reveal cracks in the theory. At the LHCb experiment, they search for subtle differences between matter and antimatter in the decays of beauty quarks, looking for a second source of CP violation that cosmology demands must exist. In Japan, they run the T2K neutrino experiment to measure whether neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate at the same rate, and they are building hardware for the next-generation DUNE and Hyper-K experiments. This is fundamental science. It will not produce a commercial product next year. But past fundamental particle physics gave us the World Wide Web, medical imaging, and the proton therapy beams now used to treat cancer. A deeper understanding of matter's fundamental structure could, over decades, enable technologies we cannot yet imagine.
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The scope of the proposed research lies in five distinct areas: Higgs and new phenomena searches at the ATLAS Experiment; the physics of particles containing the beauty quark at LHCb; the physics of neutrinos with neutrino oscillation and double-beta decay experiments; other routes to new physics with e.g. Darkside, NuSTORM, FCC and quantum sensors; detector R&D. It also includes Outreach and Knowledge Exchange programmes. In more detail: o The ATLAS experiment at CERN, a large, general purpose detector operating at the LHC was designed to search for and study the Higgs boson, as well as new exotic forms of matter. Our work involves contributing to the experiment's ability to identify interesting events as well as helping to construct an upgraded detector able to work in the new environment of an upgraded LHC. We will also contribute to the detailed study of the Higgs boson by helping to optimise the collection of events in which it decays to pairs of tau leptons, heavy relatives of the electron. We will also look for other, heavier exotic new bosons. o We aim to further our research into matter/anti-matter asymmetry (CP Violation) in the decays of Beauty mesons at the LHCb experiment. This is important, because we have shown in past experiments that the leading source of CP violation at the weak scale is consistent with the Standard Model mechanism of CP violation. However, cosmological considerations indicate that there should be other sources of CP violation in Nature, so we aim to make further sensitive tests with beauty mesons, in order to see if any evidence for additional sources of CP violation appear in such decays. We also plan to study rare decays of B mesons, which may be able to indicate the presence of new types of interactions outside the Standard Model of particle physics. o The elucidation of the properties of neutrinos. We have built part of the T2K experiment which is now operating in Japan. Analyses of T2K data has helped to show conclusively that neutrinos transmute or `oscillate' from one type to the other. We aim to continue running this experiment, to better measure these oscillations, and to establish whether the rate of oscillation is the same for anti-neutrinos. In parallel, we are deeply involved with preparations for the next generation of oscillation experiment. These projects, DUNE and Hyper-K, are entering the construction phase and we are making various contributions in both hardware and software to help enable the experiments to be ready for data taking around 2026. We are also contributing to the SuperNEMO and LEGEND experiments, which are sensitive to the scale of the neutrino mass and will determine whether the neutrino is it's own anti-particle (i.e. whether it is a Majorana particle or not). o We propose to continue our research across a raft of other projects with the potential to unlock new physics from different directions i.e. accelerator studies which are informing the design of next generation neutrino and muon beams; the dark matter search project Darkside; next generation energy frontier colliders (e.g. ILC and FCC); the application of quantum sensor technology to particle physics (e.g. the QTNM project applying quantum sensor technology to the measurement of neutrino mass). o We propose to continue our research and development of position- and energy-sensitive detectors for applications in neutrino experiments and with potential spin-off applications in industry. o We will continue to develop our outreach programme which includes activities for local schools and articles in popular science publications. o Supported by a strong University strategy and ethos in knowledge exchange, we will continue to pursue all avenues for possible knowledge exchange.
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