The University of Manchester Experimental Particle Physics Group Rolling Grant Application 2006-2011

Manchester University’s particle physicists are smashing protons together at record energies and hunting for a rare nuclear decay that would rewrite the rules of matter. They run five experiments simultaneously: ATLAS at CERN’s LHC will probe the highest-energy collisions ever created, expected to reveal new particles; BaBar measures why matter survived over antimatter after the Big Bang; Dzero searches for new forces at Fermilab; and SuperNemo looks for a type of beta decay that, if found, would prove the neutrino is its own antiparticle. This is fundamental science. It addresses the deepest gap in physics: what the universe is made of and why it exists at all. The experiments test the Standard Model and look for cracks that could point to entirely new laws of nature. There is no immediate practical application. The group also runs R&D on detectors, electronics, accelerators, and computing—infrastructure that often spins out into medical imaging, data processing, or accelerator technologies decades later. But the primary goal is understanding, not utility. Past fundamental particle physics gave us the World Wide Web and PET scanners; this work may yield similar surprises, but that is not why it is funded.