A team at the University of Sussex is building and operating particle detectors to hunt for dark matter and to understand why the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter. The researchers work on multiple experiments simultaneously: at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider they search for new particles; in underground laboratories they try to catch dark matter particles interacting with ordinary matter; and in neutrino experiments they study why neutrinos have mass and whether they behave differently from their antimatter counterparts. One experiment, nEDM, measures the neutron’s electric dipole moment with extreme precision to look for subtle differences between matter and antimatter. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. But similar curiosity-driven research into particle physics has historically led to technologies such as the World Wide Web, medical imaging (PET scanners), and particle accelerators now used for cancer therapy. If the Sussex group’s work succeeds, it could reshape our understanding of how the universe works at its most basic level—answering why anything exists at all.
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The Sussex Experimental Particle Physics (EPP) group counts eleven investigators, and focuses on the following main research areas: - the exploration of the Energy Frontier at the ATLAS experiment, ATLAS Upgrades and in future opportunities at colliders; - the exploration of the Intensity Frontier with Neutrino Physics at the SNO+, NOVA, DUNE and SBND experiments; - precision measurements of the neutron electric dipole moment (the nEDM experiment). The group participates in GridPP and Sussex hosts a certified Grid Tier-2 computing cluster. At ATLAS, we search for physics beyond the current understanding of particle physics. We study in detail the particle interactions to verify our current understanding, but also look for evidence of new processes. This includes the search for Dark Matter - the elusive component of the Universe that we know is there from many cosmological experimental results, but that has not yet been observed and is not yet accounted for in our current models describing our understanding of matter. We will continue to lead on analysis and the ATLAS trigger (which makes fast real- time decisions about what data is important and should be kept) at the upcoming LHC luminosity upgrades. In parallel with the exploitation of ATLAS and the ATLAS upgrade work, we will maintain an involvement in R&D and physics studies for possible future colliders, aiming to further deepen our understanding of matter and the Universe. We also search directly for Dark Matter by building and operating experiments to try and observe Dark Matter interacting directly inside these experiments. The neutrino has already provided some unexpected surprises and its study promises to answer fundamental questions about the nature of matter. At SNO+, we search for rare decays that could reveal the fundamental nature of neutrinos. At NOvA, we hope to better understand the extremely small masses of neutrinos and test whether matter and anti-matter perhaps behave in different ways. This study will be continued at the DUNE (a future, large-scale liquid-argon experiment). The combination of the studies at the SNO+ and DUNE/NOvA experiments has the potential to explain one of science's biggest questions to date: why is the Universe currently made out of matter and why is there no anti-matter any more? There have been some hints that there are more than the three neutrinos that we so far know about. The SBND experiment will look for evidence for new neutrinos and allow us to build up direct experience with the technology for the future DUNE experiment. The nEDM experiment studies the properties of neutrons with exquisite precision, complementing the ATLAS, neutrino and dark matter programmes by looking in a completely different way for evidence of a difference in behaviour between matter and antimatter. We participate in experiments through the analysis of data and contributions to technical deliverables. This builds skills among our PhD students and our researches and these developments have led to strong impact. We will continue to do this, in particular in the area of Artificial Intelligence, exploiting techniques that we use in our research. We will continue to actively interact with local industry and forge stronger links. Furthermore, we will bring our research to schools, teachers and the general public in innovative ways on a local, national and international level
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