Queen Mary physicists are smashing particles together at four different experiments worldwide to test whether the Standard Model of particle physics holds up at extreme energies. These experiments address a fundamental gap in knowledge: the Standard Model cannot explain why matter survived the Big Bang, what dark matter is, or why particles have mass. The group operates the BaBar experiment in California, which measures how matter and antimatter behave differently, and the H1 experiment in Germany, which probes the proton's structure. They are also building and commissioning the ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, set to take data in 2007, which will search for the Higgs boson and any new particles or forces at the trillion-electronvolt energy scale. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. It asks what the universe is made of and how its basic forces work. Past fundamental particle physics research led directly to the World Wide Web, medical imaging technologies like PET scans, and cancer therapy using particle beams. If ATLAS finds the Higgs boson or unexpected new particles, it will rewrite textbooks. If it finds nothing, physicists will need entirely new theories to explain how the universe operates.
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The Queen Mary Group has an exciting and wide ranging set of particle physics experiments. Some, presently taking data, continue to publish new results that advance our knowledge of the fundamental interactions of nature, and the others are in various stages of instrumentation construction and commissioning. Analysis techniques and physics simulation are also underway in order to allow results to be extracted from future data. Presently in operation: the BaBar experiment at PEP II, at SLAC, provides new measurements of CP-violation parameters that are testing the validity of present theories and their assumptions, while the H1 experiment at HERA, DESY continues taking data that has already contributed to testing the predictions of the Standard Model, and has potential for new discoveries. For our experiments being prepared for future machines: at the CERN LHC, at Geneva, installation, integration and final commissioning are in progress for the ATLAS experiment, targeted for first data in 2007, where we will test current concepts at the TeV energy scale, and reveal either the expected (but as yet) missing bosons, through new discoveries, or else impose new requirements within the Standard Model or its Supersymmetric alternatives. For operation beyond the LHC start-up we have developed accelerator-related instrumentation and techniques related to a operation of the international electron-positron Linear Collider which will explore the new physics identified at the LHC. The Queen Mary Group is also at the forefront of developments in a planned new long baseline neutrino experiment in Japan, and in providing massive in-house computing resources that will allow the maximum overall physics returns to come from our present and future ventures.
Adrian Bevan (Co-Investigator)Alex Martin (Co-Investigator)Antony Carter (Principal Investigator)Eram Rizvi (Co-Investigator)Eric F. Eisenhandler (Co-Investigator)Francesca Di Lodovico (Co-Investigator)Graham Thompson (Co-Investigator)Lucio Cerrito (Co-Investigator)Stephen Lloyd (Co-Investigator)
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